


An Uncommon War

by oxymoronic



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Backstory, Bisexual Character, Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Implied/Referenced Torture, Internalized Misogyny, M/M, Mildly Dubious Consent, Original Character(s), Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-12
Updated: 2014-12-22
Packaged: 2018-02-24 18:07:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 32,718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2591156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oxymoronic/pseuds/oxymoronic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dishonourably discharged from Afghanistan, Sebastian Moran returns purposeless and freewheeling to London; here he finds himself recruited for a different fight by the most dangerous man in London.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Goodness. I don't even know where to begin. I'm posting this on the two-year anniversary of when I first started writing it, and there are so, so many people who I need to thank for their endless support during that time, for constantly telling me not to give up and to keep on working at it; most especially shinobi93 and kneesntoews, who've been so wonderful over the past two years, both in putting up with my endless moping and in pushing me to finally finish and post the damn thing. Honorary mentions also must go to starling-girl and jackmarlowe, placetnemagistra and triffidsandcuckoos, and anyone else on my tumblr who's been supportive. I'm so grateful. I can't even count how many times I really honestly thought this would never be published. 
> 
> I should warn readers that the Moran written below is at times deeply unpleasant, especially towards other female characters, and I don't condone his behaviour in the least (I think I give him what he deserves for his actions, but that's beside the point). If this is likely to upset you, please don't read. Likewise, I don't obsess over the graphic details of torture more than a few handfuls of words, but it is at times quite violent. The dubcon warning is for a scene in chapter five, in which both parties are consenting but this is not established beforehand - I will flag it up more comprehensively in that chapter, and it would definitely be possible to skip this scene without missing out too much. If you'd like any further information, or a more stringent warning/summary of any of the issues in the fic (or indeed come across anything you feel I should warn for and haven't), please do get in touch. 
> 
> This fic is canon compliant with series three, but was plotted largely during the hiatus between series two and three; it would perhaps therefore work best if only the first two series were kept in mind. 
> 
> With that nastiness aside, all I have left is to thank again everyone who's been involved in getting this story this far. I really never thought this day would come. I really, really do hope you enjoy it, and thank you so much for reading.

_“Madness, as you know, is like gravity. All it takes is a little push...”_ – _The Dark Knight_ (2008)

 

 

The high-walled, oak-panelled room tastes like creaking velvet, smells like something perfumed and rotting. Sebastian shifts slightly in the tight wooden chair, listens to the patter of traffic and the slosh of the tide against the banks through the half-open window; that he’s been sat here for over an hour originates far more from a desire to fuck with him than any true reflection of his father's supposedly hectic schedule. Eventually, a woman puts her head around the doorframe; petite, blonde, bored, she throws her eyes around his figure carelessly, says to come through in a monotone, her eyes reverting back to her smartphone long before she finishes speaking. With a groan of failing wood, Sebastian stands to follow her through the now-open door. 

The space before his father’s desk is filled by two large, high-backed leather chairs, jagged, tombstone-like things squatting unpleasantly either side of a fraying Persian rug, likely some unpleasant colonial remnant it pleases his father to own. “Sit,” says Augustus Moran, wedged into a plush black chair, his thick figure spilling loosely over the sides; Sebastian chooses to stand. His father narrows small, beady eyes, but doesn’t comment, choosing instead to tug an important-looking document towards him across his beautifully-buffed, undoubtedly expensive desk. “Don’t look so damned ungrateful. By rights I shouldn’t even allow you in here.”

Sebastian fixes his gaze on a spot three foot above his father’s shoulder, tugs his tongue firmly in check. His father sighs in a loud, flatulent sort of way, and leans back in his chair; it cries out for mercy in a long shriek of stressed leather. “I’ve found someone to take you on. I’m not going to lie – it’s a miserable little job, a paperpushing thing in a quango somewhere. Ruddy department won’t last much longer in this climate anyway. But it’s a start.”

A thin, uncomfortable silence stretches between them. Sebastian is vaguely aware he is meant to be grateful; but this is no true kindness on his father’s part. Even if they weren’t having this conversation in his Westminster office, thick with the rank smell of power and privilege, it would still be yet another exercise in humiliation of his hopeless son. “Thank you,” Sebastian musters, eventually, and his father lets out an undignified, disbelieving snort. Sebastian knows a dismissal when he hears one.

He stops by the secretary’s desk for the address of his new employer, and the same blonde woman as before hands him a business card with an identical stench of bored indifference. Sebastian flips the card between his fingers as he winds down dark-panelled corridors, his face pulled into a scowl, dropped as ever into a thick distemper after having been subjected to his father and his displeasure. A quango. Paperpushing in a fucking quango. It’s enough to make him miss Afghanistan. There's a familiar crest stamped discreetly in a corner on the back; _the club_ , he thinks. Of course.

Parliament Square is predictably clogged; he cheats a stern-looking German couple to the nearest taxi, but is informed on arriving at the headquarters of his father’s illustrious, expensive, and above all exclusive gentleman’s club that the Right Honourable Lord Cartwright is, of course, very busy, and it was quite expectant of Sebastian to turn up without an appointment. He’s ushered through to one of the lesser lounges with an air of deep distaste, where he’s left to pace the room restlessly, itching to run, until a skinny young man in an ill-fitting suit eventually arrives to apologise unconvincingly for the delay. He's so lacking an air of contrition Sebastian feels almost obliged to congratulate him. “Lord Cartwright simply cannot see you this morning," the man continues in the same light, dry voice; he isn't yet quite skilled enough to mask his obvious contempt. “Perhaps you could call back to arrange another time for you to meet.”

Two offhand dismissals in an hour is almost a record for Sebastian, and he reflects dourly on his misfortune as he’s shepherded brusquely back towards the main door of the club; but as Sebastian loiters in the large, marble-floored hallway to have his coat unceremoniously returned to him, he spots someone watching him on the landing above. He can see very little of his face save for the darkness of his eyes and the long sweep of his clean-shaven jaw, but something about the figure intrigues him nonetheless. He keeps his eyes trained up above, unashamed of his curiosity, even as he’s handed back his things and prompted curtly towards the door. Sebastian makes a show of tipping a non-existent hat as he leaves, and he’s sure as he turns away that he catches sight of a wide, sharp smile, glittering gently in the half-light.

 

 

 

It’s ten, maybe fifteen minutes later when Sebastian gets a call, halfway home in another smelly London cab, irritated by the traffic’s slowness as much as the driver’s laxity. His phone unhelpfully informs him the number is _unknown_ , but he doesn’t need its prompting to work out who, precisely, is ringing him.

 _“You’re rather obvious,”_ the voice answers the moment he engages the call. High-pitched, Irish, male. It rocks dangerously back and forth across its words in a manner that is somehow hypnotic. _“I would hope a man with your reputation would be far more subtle.”_

He swallows the obvious questions, the _who how why_ s. “Do I get to know your name?” he asks as he tilts forward in his seat, knocking twice on the glass partition to tell the driver to pull over.

 _“Mmm. Maybe. I haven’t decided. Lunch at the Grosvenor, one-thirty. Try, at least, to comb your hair,”_ he adds, and hangs up.

“Change of direction?” the cabbie asks cheerfully from the front.

Sebastian glances down at his watch; it’s pushing noon, and though he’s got plenty of time to reach Victoria, he hasn’t enough to go home and come back again. “Let me out here,” he replies, fishing in his pocket for cash. It’s not exactly a short walk from here to the Grosvenor, but he’s already only vaguely hopeful he’ll find somewhere en route offering him some manner of dealing with his unkempt hair for less than a tenner.

Augustus Moran thinks the Grosvenor cheap and common, which says more about his father than it does about the hotel itself; Sebastian is unfamiliar with it, but knows its kind on instinct. He’s shown from the door through to the restaurant by a small man with a squinting, irritable gaze, and though he doesn’t know what name to ask for, he spots the other man the moment he enters the vast, brightly-lit dining hall. His companion looks smaller out of the gloomy light of the club, but he still distorts the room somehow, a leaden weight at its centre.

He smiles smoothly as Sebastian sits, lounging in his chair. “Lovely to finally meet you, Colonel Moran,” he says, sugar-sweet; Sebastian resists the urge to roll his eyes. A scowling waiter appears from nowhere and pours him a glass of iced water he doesn’t want, but he takes it in hand anyway, downs half of it in a single go.

“You’re not some friend of my father’s, are you?” Sebastian asks, leaning back easily in his chair, wiping his mouth on the back of his sleeve in a sloppy gesture.

The man in front of him tilts his head, squints a little. He’s still smirking. “No,” he replies, amused; this is, at least, refreshing. “I didn’t know either of you existed before today.”

Well, Sebastian thinks. That’s refreshing. “And what do you know now?”

The man shrugs one shoulder. “I know you come from money. I know you go to war for fun.”

Sebastian’s hackles instantly rise, and he quickly schools his expression; his skin itches with anger at the thought, but he has years of experience in keeping his voice calm. “For fun?” he echoes. “You’ve never been to war, have you?”

His smirk grows; his shoulder shrugs again. “Depends how you define the term.”

The waiter reappears at his companion’s side, and Sebastian lets the man order for the both of them. A few minutes of silence pass in which they study one another; Sebastian learns nothing, but he ensures he’s confident he could pick him out in a crowd should it come to it. Their waiter returns with a jug, this time, and his companion refills his glass unbidden. “I want you to kill a man,” he says, brusquely, once the waiter has departed. “I had a sniper, but he was inefficient and lazy and he bored me.”

Sebastian watches him carefully, knowing to keep his face blank and calm. “Will you tell me why?”

“No. Does it matter?”

Sebastian inclines his head. “That depends.”

“On what?”

“How you want me to kill him,” Sebastian replies, and his companion’s smile turns feral.

They pause for the appearance of the entrée, something small and pink blended artfully on neatly-squared, crisped pieces of bread, too large for croutons. “With a gun,” he continues, once they are alone again. “From afar. Cleanly and discreetly.” He pauses for a moment; his eyes snap up to find Sebastian’s. “This time,” he adds, and something hot and raw unfurls in Sebastian’s gut.

Their plates are cleared. Sebastian settles back in his chair. “I assume I will be paid.”

“Naturally. I imagine you haven’t got much by way of income at the moment, with no pay and no promised pension.” The insult is clumsy, obvious, but his sweet little grin makes Sebastian’s blood boil regardless. “Or you could forgo it for rent, of course,” he continues, “if we come to a more... permanent arrangement. Living with your parents aged thirty-three must be more than a little unwelcome.”

Sebastian smiles thinly in reply, but even though he’s only known this man for all of thirty minutes, he knows better than to ask the obvious questions. “Rent?” he asks, instead.

He waves a dismissive hand. “I own most of London. If I don’t, I will acquire it. You can pick wherever you want.”

Their main arrives. Sebastian hopes he isn’t paying; he knows the price of a place like this, and even so, all of the assembled slices of meat on his plate would barely match up to the size of his fist. It takes him all of five minutes to clear his plate, but his companion eats far more slowly, and Sebastian finds himself sat back in his chair in silence, resisting the urge to fidget, sending his gaze darting around the room. The tables immediately around them are empty, despite the hour, but elsewhere the dining room is busy; he glances at each of their neighbours in turn. Mostly elderly couples, wealthy tourists, or well-clad businessmen. Their conversations are beyond earshot; he could lip-read if he concentrated, but truth be told they all bore him from first glance. He allows himself to run a hand through his scruffy hair, still uncombed. He’d been revolted by the prices the Boots at Piccadilly Circus had offered him for a cheap bit of pressed plastic.

Eventually, his companion finishes, and their plates are promptly snatched away at lightspeed. “How will you get me the gear?” Sebastian asks.

“Via a drop-off for now," the man replies, settling back easily in his chair, dabbing at a nonexistent mark at the side of his mouth with a plushly-woven handkerchief. “If this becomes permanent, elsewise.”

Sebastian doesn’t reply. He has already guessed what exactly will happen to him should they fail to make a _permanent arrangement_. His companion seems to guess his thoughts; he affords Sebastian another wide, feral smile.

They reach dessert; it’s far too sickly for Sebastian’s taste, but his companion laps it up, demolishes it in moments. Sebastian neatly hides his distaste and eats at a more sedate speed, taking his time to think through the man’s proposition before he’s forced to answer him. His father wouldn’t like it, if he ever were to know, but if Sebastian were ever likely to tell him, his father’s distaste would matter little to him anyway. He has little idea what the man in front of him will have him do; but he knows instinctively it sounds far better than paperpushing in a defunct and dying quango. He has something of the taste of war about him, something both coarse and sharp at once, and since Sebastian can no longer fight for queen and country, this may have to do.

He’s also under no illusions as to his lack of options. He knows full well that if he turns this man down he will be dead inside a week.

Sebastian orders tea when his companion gets the bill; coffee reminds him of Afghanistan, of the patter of shellfire and the flittering light of the guns. The other man folds the thin piece of paper neatly around a credit card and flashes it aloft. “You haven’t asked my name,” he says as their waiter rejoins them, card machine in hand.

Sebastian raises his eyebrow. “I didn’t think you’d say,” he answers, truthfully.

Sebastian is studied in silence until their server departs; he doesn’t like the look of surprised amusement he recognises, as if Sebastian is some simple-minded moron who has unexpectedly outstretched his small intellect. “Moriarty,” the man eventually replies, once they are alone. “James Moriarty.” He settles back in his chair with his broad, feral smile, and adds, “but you can call me Jim.”

 

 

 

He can tell his mother is home when he unlocks the door; the thick, pervasive, rotten smell of her cigarettes is unmistakeable. He rubs his eyes, steps through into their living room, and spots her nonchalantly arranged across their only chaise longue, an arm elegantly draped across her forehead and the blinds shuttered to keep out the unwelcome sun. She’s likely either drunk or hungover.

“Don’t be so fucking loud, Sebastian,” she says by way of greeting; hungover, then. It’s two in the afternoon, for fuck’s sake. “I’ve such a headache.” Her thin lips bunch around the cigarette, sending tiny, ugly lines rippling around her mouth. “How was Cartwright?”

“Fine,” he replies curtly, moving to open the window. He has to pass her to do it, and he tries not to breathe in, the air rancid with her stale sweat.

She grimaces at the accompanying onslaught of fresh sunlight. “Have you spoken to Daisy yet?”

“No.”

“Well, get on with it, for fuck’s sake,” she snaps irritably, then winces, rubbing at the bridge of her nose. “Invite her for dinner next week. Go round to hers and fuck her against a wall if you have to, but if you leave her much longer she’ll be bored of you, you know.”

Sebastian grits his teeth. “Yes. Thank you. Is there anything else?”

She looks up at him through narrow eyes. “I didn’t fucking ask you to be here,” she replies, and without another word Sebastian leaves the room.

 _I didn’t fucking ask you to be here._ He stands in the hallway, cold and silent, and squares his shoulders. He needs a drink.

 

 

 

Cathy Stapleton glares at him with narrow eyes. “If I fail tomorrow,” she says, archly, “you are going to fucking owe me.”

Sebastian grins widely, pressing back against the squeaky leather of the tiny booth. The pub they’ve settled in is raucously loud, and the wooden table unpleasantly sticky from too much spilled beer. “Relax,” he replies, tone deliberately obsequious and irritating. “Who’s the invigilator? Matthews? Robertson? You’ll walk it.”

“Don’t take the piss. My daddy’s not dining with the governing body every Thursday night.” She pauses, glances at him guiltily. “Sorry. That was unfair.”

Sebastian raises an eyebrow, waves his hand. “Please, by all means. It’s nothing I haven’t heard before.” She glares at him again, and he lets his grin grow; she’s wonderfully easy to wind up. “How are you finding things, anyway?”

She shrugs. “For a while it was nice to be out of basic, but I forgot how much academia fucking _bores_ me. Still, I’ve only got to pass this last lot and then I can fly out at the end of the year.” She takes a drink of her beer, glances his way. “How about you? How’s home?”

He sends her a long, flat look, and she smiles into her drink. “Don’t talk to me about boredom,” he replies dryly. “Never thought I’d miss the Middle East, Jesus.”

Sebastian scours his face with his hand, but when he lets his arm drop again he catches Cathy watching him in silence, her expression unreadable. “Seb,” she says, gently, and it grates across his skin, the way the world is so fucking _careful_ around him now. “Bill said – ”

“Whatever you’ve heard,” he says, shortly, “it’s likely to be fucking true, alright?”

Her mouth snaps shut, and her eyes fill quickly with wounded anger. “Right,” she says, and sets down her glass, folding her arms and staring resolutely away across the pub.

Sebastian sighs and rubs his eyes. “Sorry,” he says, leaning forwards and touching her arm; she sends him a cool look, purses her lips. "No, really, I am. Come on, tell me what I’ve missed,” he coaxes, mouth morphing into a shit-eating grin as he begs for forgiveness. “How’s Bill? How’re your parents?”

Cathy succumbs to a small smile, rolling her eyes. “Alright. But I’m going full-frontal on details, and you can’t complain about it.”

Sebastian grins, settling back in his seat and spreading his hands. “No fear. I full-on asked for them. Bring it.”

She sends him a withering look, as if to say she can’t quite believe he’s real sometimes; but although he projects a perfected image of rapt attention, he lets himself glaze over the moment she begins to talk. He’s thinking instead back to the high-walled dining room he’d been in just a few hours before, the man who had sat across the table in front of him; the cruelty in his eyes, the sharpness of his smile.

 

 

 

Several days pass before he hears from Moriarty again, but he isn’t naïve enough to consider himself forgotten. Though Sebastian had imagined an illicit rendezvous down some unfrequented alleyway in the back end of Battersea, in reality an indescribable, unremarkable man tracks him down in his local Tesco's and hands Sebastian a folded piece of paper with trained indifference. They’re surrounded by harried parents and bored commuters; nobody so much as looks their way, and even if they did, they’d see nothing beside the frankest facts. They’d probably assume Sebastian was being presented with a shopping list. 

He looks down at the paper in his hand, unfolds it, and reads a postcode and a flat number; there’s a key taped to the page beneath it. “This is – ?” he begins, but he’s talking to thin air; Moriarty’s man is gone. He purses his lips and pockets the key, taking care to memorise the details on the paper and wondering how best to destroy it. He can’t help but think even this is all very cloak-and-dagger, but he supposes the man has to be discreet.

He waits until the grisly evening descends, thick with pathetic rain. The flat is in an unfamiliar part of town, and he allows himself plenty of time to find it, keeps checking and double-checking he isn’t being followed. It’s in the middle of an unpleasant council estate, but the last time Sebastian had been in a block of flats with a gun it’d been in Kabul; Hackney somehow pales in comparison.

He makes his way silently to flat thirty-one, and though he sees and is seen by no-one, he still has the hot, leaden weight of nerves in his gut. The lights are off in the flat as he lets himself in, but he knows better than to assume he’s alone; he spends a moment paused in the doorway, the streetlight spilling a narrow wedge of dark orange onto the matted carpet, listening hard, poised to fight, poised to run. When he hears nothing after a minute or so, he almost-shuts the door and walks inside, flicking on the light. It’s clearly someone’s home; there are half-crumpled crisp packets scattered amongst faded, framed photos, dirty crockery intermingled with assorted junk on every surface. He wonders who it belongs to; he can’t believe Moriarty would live in such a place. He spots a duffel bag dumped unceremoniously in the middle of the room, and opens it to find a Rangemaster in a black carry-case, well-serviced, gleaming beautifully in the dim electric light. There’s a little ammunition, but not much; Moriarty must trust his aim. Perhaps he knows of his reputation. Interesting.

There’s another piece of paper underneath it, folded as before. It shows a picture of a man, fat, white, balding, squinty-eyed, sweaty-faced. Mid forties, he’d guess. No name, or location. He frowns and flips it over, but even as he does the phone in his pocket begins to trill sharply into the empty room.

He fishes it out, reads _unknown_ ; he allows himself a smile, given that there’s no one there to see it. _“Go to the window,”_ Moriarty says, and Sebastian does. He pushes it open with the tips of his fingers, feels the wet slap of the stagnant air across his face, thick and musty with the smell of damp concrete. His eyes automatically drop down. _“The white van to your right. Wait for him to pay.”_

Moriarty hangs up. Sebastian stares down at the van, waits for his heartbeat to slow. He can train the Rangemaster out of the window easily enough; but he hadn’t expected to be shooting from this building. He has no escape route planned, no backup as far as he’s aware. He doesn’t even know whether he’s supposed to take the gun after the job is finished.

Sebastian sets up his machinery in quick, steady movements, as methodical as he’s always been, as he was trained to be. The gun is longer and heavier than the L96A1 he’s used to, and he takes his time learning the tics of the machine. He can’t afford to be rusty. Once finished, he settles to one side, eases some of the pins and needles out of his tired limbs, trying to ignore the creeping nervousness winding tightly around his gut. He’d not expected this of tonight; he’d thought he’d be handed a gun, given a few more days before his target was made known to him. He supposes Moriarty had thought Sebastian might get cold feet, hanging around waiting for his target to be named. He knows with absolute certainty this will all be to test him.

A flash of movement catches his eye; a shiny BMW pulls up next to the van, ostentatious and out of place. The fat man is behind the wheel, glancing in the rear-view mirror nervously, smoothing down his wispy hair. The passenger door of the van opens, and a kid steps out, maybe fifteen years old; he gestures for the BMW-man to step forward. Sebastian trains his scope onto him the moment he steps from the car, and the fear in his gut twists through every limb, kicks his pulse up until his blood is pounding in his ears in a long, steady roar.

He’s never killed a man outside of war. His hands shake a little as he flexes them around the gun, and he wonders, not for the first time, how he came to this, how he ever thought this was a good idea. _He’ll kill me if I don’t_ , he thinks, but it’s half-hearted at best; Sebastian knows he can run if he has to, can defend himself if it comes to it. It’s the excuse his brain has trotted forth in the hope he’ll be able to sleep a little easier tonight.

If he does this, it’ll be because he wants to. It’ll be because he’s been craving it since the day he left Afghanistan.

Beneath him, money is changing hands. The fat man peels away from the van, thumbing through the wad of tiny plastic packets he’s just been handed, his tongue jammed out between his teeth.

 _Depends how you define the term_.

Sebastian shoots. He drops him with a single shot.


	2. Chapter 2

“ –bastian? You haven’t heard a single word I’ve said all night.”

Sebastian looks up. Across the table, Daisy is peering at him with her small, brown eyes, her face fixated with concern; she has a forkful of pasta halfway to her mouth, a few pieces of sauce-smeared campanelle dangling dangerously off the sides. He sends her a small smile, mutters an apology under his breath, and looks down at his own, empty plate. He catches the way her face pinches in sympathy and sorrow; she probably thinks he’s come home traumatised. He decides not to tell her he slept better last night than he has in months.

She slips her hand over his. Her skin is dry and warm. “Maybe you should go home,” she says, so gently, so fucking _careful_. He fights the urge to tug his hand away, offers to help with the washing up at least, and she smiles, rolls her eyes.

“Have you found somewhere to live yet?” she asks as they bustle around her tiny kitchenette, handing one another various pieces of crockery and getting in each other’s way. She sends him a careful look, her pace of tea-towelling slowing for a moment. “You know,” she says, slowly, “if it’s the deposit, and you don’t want to ask your parents – ”

“It isn’t,” he says abruptly, turning away to hide the irritation on his face. “I’m sorted. Don’t worry.”

“Oh,” she replies. “Good.” He’s made himself busy stacking away her pots and pans, and can’t see her face, but he winces at the tone. Not her fault, he reminds himself – but the crueller side of him just wishes she’d shut up, wishes she’d let him alone.

She kisses him on the doorstep, and her mouth is soft and dry. She smells lovely, she feels lovely, she tastes lovely, but it’s fucking dull. He’d loved her before he left; but he’d hardly thought of her while he’d been away. He feels like he’s stumbled back into a half-remembered routine.

He walks the long way round to Holborn tube; it’s a miserable, early April evening, but although the pavement underfoot is smeared with rain, there’s no threat of it in the sky above. He’s surrounded by the late commuter crowd, heads bowed, hunkered against the cold. He stares at their muddled, blank faces and decides it’s a life he sincerely hopes he’ll never know.

He’s balanced on the pedestrian island halfway across Kingsway when he spies a sleek, black Audi hovering a few feet down the road, carefully intermingled incongruously with the traffic, and though he can’t explain why, something about it sets his teeth on edge. He decides to test a theory, and once he crosses the road he ignores the bright expanse of Holborn station and continues north instead, keeping one eye behind him. The car peels out of lane and follows him; if Sebastian felt it weren’t ridiculous to give a car sentiment, he would say it appeared nonchalant. He cuts through Sicilian Avenue and out through onto Vernon Place, leaving the car helplessly tangled in the one-way system, and then north across Bloomsbury to head for Russell Square instead. Though he spends the journey underground itchy and nervous, it seems they were unable to follow him on foot, and he arrives home edgy but unhindered. 

The house is dark when he unlocks the door. The air tastes stale; he can tell his parents argued earlier in the day. He leaves the lights off as he climbs the stairs to his room, all the while thinking of that sleek black car, thinking of the duffel bag he has stuffed underneath his bed. There are no suspicious cars loitering in the street below, no twitching curtains in the houses opposite, but Sebastian doesn’t sleep for some time, chooses to sit by the window and watch the street settle into silence instead.

 

 

 

When Sebastian falls out of bed minutes before noon the following day, his tail is far from subtle. He walks across to open the curtains, still half-dressed, and when he looks down at the street below there’s a squat green Jeep parked in front of the house. The driver’s abandoned his seat to lean against the bonnet and smoke profusely; he looks up when Sebastian draws the curtains back, and touches his brow with two fingers in a mock salute. Sebastian snorts, turns away to pull on his shirt. He supposes he should at least congratulate the man on his audacity.

His mother is sat having lunch when he comes downstairs, wrapped up in a thin silk robe, her hair spilling loosely down her back. He puts a hand to her shoulder and kisses the crown of her head, drinks in the familiar, sharp smell of alcohol, bites back a sigh.

“Shouldn’t you be in the office?” she asks. She half-slurs her words.

“Not starting til Monday,” he calls back as he leaves the room, grabbing his coat from where he slung it aside last night and turning the collar up against the cold as he walks out the door. Across the street, the driver catches sight of him and stubs out his cigarette, throwing Sebastian a cheerful wave.

“In you get, sir,” he says happily, opening the rear door, and Sebastian resists the urge to roll his eyes as he climbs inside. His professionalism seems to sink back in once the engine starts, and he reaches over to turn off the radio, lets the car drop into heavy silence. Sebastian watches them wind lazily through Marylebone and Soho, cruising along the Embankment before crossing the river at London Bridge. _South of the river_ , Sebastian thinks, twisting his lips into a wry smile. Now his father would definitely disapprove.

They pull over somewhere in Bermondsey, and though the driver shows no sign of moving, Sebastian catches sight of another well-suited man loitering by the entrance to a smart-looking high-rise. “Top floor,” the driver says, glancing in the rear-view mirror, and Sebastian thanks him, slides out of the car. He walks across to the suited man with a pointed smile; the door is opened for him in silence. Sebastian doesn’t miss the sharpness of his glare.

He finds the top floor otherwise deserted, one door ajar at its furthest end. He daren’t enter without permission, and decides to knock once pointlessly on the pushed-back door; he is greeted by a singsong “ _come in!”_ grating cheerfully across his nerves. The flat is clean to the point of sterile, and Sebastian’s shoes squeak noisily on the hardwood floor. The corridor follows through to a huge, open-plan living room, a set of high glass windows affording spectacular views of the city, stretching eastwards down the river to Greenwich and the dome and westwards towards the centre itself, St Paul’s and Tower Bridge. Jim Moriarty is lounging easily on a vast sofa sprawling across the middle of the floor, and his mouth is spread wide in a predatory smile.

“Good, isn’t it?” he asks sweetly.

Sebastian looks away from the view to the man himself. He doesn’t answer; he suspects his ability to avoid stating the obvious is one of the main reasons he’s still breathing. “Do you live here?” Sebastian asks instead; it seems like his sort of place. The room they’re standing in is notably void of any personal touch.

Moriarty tilts his head. “No,” he replies, amused. “Alex Maccleson lives here. Well, he did, until you shot him in the head. Now he doesn’t have much use for it.” Sebastian stares at him blankly, uncertain how to respond; Moriarty rolls his eyes and continues, monosyllabic and overly slow, “I thought you could have it.”

Sebastian’s eyes widen. “Live here?”

Moriarty sends him a long, slow glare, as if personally offended by his stupidity. “ _Yes_.” He stands in a single, fluid movement, and paces round the sofa to stand at Sebastian’s side. He grants Sebastian a small, sweet smile as he draws near. “It’s not a problem, is it?”

Sebastian throws him a look. “No.”

His smile grows. “Good,” he murmurs. They’re standing quite close in the vast, empty flat, and Sebastian’s trying and failing to read his eyes, to shake the way his skin is tight and crawling. “Check the button on the bathroom door,” Moriarty adds, fiddling absentmindedly with his cuffs. He glances once more around the flat, his jaw a little slack, his mind clearly elsewhere. “Don’t be out tomorrow.”

Sebastian watches him leave in silence. The front door closes with a soft, muffled sound; Sebastian makes a note to take off the dampener. He’d rather put up with a slam than not know when someone uninvited comes and goes. He hears two pairs of footsteps move towards the lift, the muted, rolling rattle as the doors open and close, then nothing.

Sebastian lets out a low whistle on a long breath, runs his hand through his hair and chuckles a little, shaking his head. Well, he thinks. First things first.

It takes him a while to even find the bathroom, and even longer to locate the so-called button; he stares at the vast white expanse of the back of the door long enough that his eyes start to smart before he notices the tiniest of indents up towards the right-hand corner, barely bigger than his thumbprint. His hand hovers over it for a moment, wondering what, exactly, he’s about to unleash, and then he jabs his hand forward in a quick movement before he loses his nerve. He hears the soft clunk of a mechanism behind him, and he turns around to find a mirror to one side of him has detached a little from the wall; he pulls it back gently with his fingertips, and it slides back easily on a well-oiled hinge. Behind it lies an impressive armoury, including a Rangemaster the twin of the one currently lying under his bed – or, at least, had thought was lying under his bed at home, until moments ago. He runs his fingers along its length, and knows with certainty if he were to check now, it would be gone.

He clicks the panel shut, makes a mental note to leave a bottle of cleaner nearby to get rid of his smeary fingerprints; then he fishes in his pocket for his phone as he walks back through to the living room, vaguely aware his lips are peeled back in a wide, nasty smile. _“Sebastian?”_ Daisy answers, immediately concerned.

“Yeah, hi, I’m fine – look, this is probably rubbish timing, but do you feel like helping me move in?”

_“What?”_

 

 

 

“Fucking hell, Sebastian,” Daisy breathes as she walks through the door, staring around his living room with open awe. She crosses to the coffee table, puts down her over-spilling box of stuff. “There’s no way in hell you can afford this place.”

He grins at her, wide and open, slings the bag across his back onto the floor. “Made a deal with my new boss,” he replies truthfully, and stalks across the room to her, starts to kiss her neck. She braces her arms across his chest, still staring around in disbelief, but she sucks her lower lip between her teeth and her eyes skim shut.

“Cartwright must be a fucking tax cheat,” she mumbles, and he ignores her, wraps his hand around her waist and lifts her up onto the breakfast bar. He slides his hands up the inside of her thighs, pushes up her skirt, and she moans, dropping her head back and bunching her hands in his hair as he trails his mouth slowly but surely downwards. “Jesus fucking _Christ_ , _Sebastian_ – ”

He goes down on her there, fucks her in the bedroom. He lets her fall asleep; he doesn’t suppose Moriarty will be much pleased to return here tomorrow and find her there, but she’ll want to be gone in the morning for work anyway. 

She’d given him this look when they’d finished, her cheeks still flushed and sweat still cooling idly around her collarbones, a long, incredulous kind of look, as if she didn’t quite believe her own eyes. Sat alone in the darkened living room, still wearing nothing but his underwear and his skin grimy and unwashed, Sebastian wrings his hands, cards his fingers through his hair. He killed a man on Tuesday night; he hadn’t even known his name before today. He killed a man because he was bitter, because he was angry; the depth and purity of his rage scares him, but not as much as the peace he’d felt when he’d pulled the trigger, the way it had just fallen out of his limbs and his lungs.

He stares out blankly at the riverside. The air outside is damp and cold, a world away from the scratchy, dry heat of Afghanistan. _Depends how you define the term._

He knows truthfully that he killed a man because Jim Moriarty asked him to.

Sebastian sleeps on the sofa, and wakes Daisy early to get the rest of his things from her car. He makes her breakfast to make up for the early start, and she smiles at him as he puts the plate in front of her, wide and warm and beautiful.

She’s out of the door by nine, and Sebastian’s left in an empty flat that smells unpleasantly of sex and fried eggs. He throws open all the windows, finds the washing machine and strips the bed, wanders around with all the cleaning products he can find until the air stinks of Dettol. He pulls everything he owns out of the embarrassingly small pile of cardboard boxes and wastes the morning stacking them methodically around the flat, fussing absentmindedly over putting things in order.

The morning slides neatly into afternoon, and as Sebastian makes himself lunch he thinks dryly that Moriarty could have let him know he was getting the morning off. It’s gone three by the time Sebastian hears a key turn in the door, and though he’s reasonably sure as to whose hand it’s in he stands swiftly nonetheless, makes sure he’s an easy distance from the bathroom, just in case. Moriarty’s mouth is twisted into a leering, knowing grin when he walks inside, tossing his keys between his fingertips. “All settled in?” he asks sweetly, and Sebastian resists the urge to roll his eyes. He follows Moriarty through into the bedroom; though he knows the bed is made with clean sheets, he can’t help but think this is intended as a comment nonetheless. He fishes one of Sebastian’s battered and abandoned paperbacks from the nightstand, raises his eyebrow. “Atkinson. Well,” he says, and puts it down. “I suppose.”

“It’s my mother’s,” Sebastian says, unable to let the comment pass.

Moriarty’s face assembles into an expression of mock surprise. “ _He speaks_ ,” he intones, his mouth warping back into a familiar grin. “About time, you’re rather boring broody.”

He wanders back off into the living room, and Sebastian pauses a moment to steady his nerves. _I had a sniper, but he was inefficient and lazy and he bored me_. He wonders whether it would be better to be obvious or boring, which of them is least likely to get him killed.

Moriarty’s expression has soured by the time Sebastian follows him through, and he hands Sebastian yet another piece of folded paper with a grainy, black-and-white photograph. Sebastian memorises it carefully and hands it back. “His name is Marcus Veidt. I need you to go for a drink with him.”

“And then kill him?”

The strength of the glare Moriarty sends him makes him momentarily fear for his own life. “No,” he says. “He’ll be in the bar of the Criterion at eight. You may drink, but if you get drunk I will have you shot. Do you understand?”

 _He’s taking the piss_ , Sebastian thinks; and then he sees his eyes. _Fuck me, no he’s not_. “I understand,” Sebastian replies.

Moriarty throws him a withering look and digs a mobile out of his pocket, putting it down on the breakfast bar right where he’d had Daisy the night before. Sebastian absently wonders if it’s deliberate; everything about the man seems perfectly calculated. “I know you have your own, but to talk to me you will use this from now on.”

 _Will I indeed?_ , Sebastian thinks dryly as he watches him leave, but he holds his tongue. The phone’s nicer and newer than his battered handset, and he assumes he won’t be paying the bill. Growing up with his father has taught him how to pick his battles.

 

 

 

Marcus Veidt, it turns out, is the world’s biggest lightweight. As instructed, Sebastian meets him at eight, and by nine-thirty p.m. he’s made four passes at the unfortunate barstaff, thrown up on Sebastian’s shoes twice, and cheerfully passed out in the back of a black cab.

Sebastian watches the city slide by, the silence only punctuated by the noisy snores of his unconscious companion. He tries very hard not to think about the way his socked feet are pressed into the unpleasantly sticky floor of the cab. They’d managed to wrestle the address out of Veidt before he’d collapsed completely, and the cab eventually sidles to a halt outside of an inexpensive-looking set of flats in the rougher end of Wandsworth; Sebastian pays the driver an exorbitant amount, tells him not to bother waiting, and half-leads, half-hauls Veidt through the battered, dog-eared front door. Thankfully, the lift isn’t broken, and it’s only a matter of dragging him down the corridor, finding his keys in his pocket, and finally dumping the foul-smelling man on his creaky, dirty single bed.

Sebastian scours his face with his hand and allows himself a long, tired sigh. He shuts the bedroom door behind him, and he’s halfway to the front door when the phone in his pocket starts to ring; he digs it out, rolls his eyes, and answers the call. “Yes?” he snaps, a little irritably.

 _“You took your time,”_ an unmistakable voice replies. Sebastian bites back a snide response, opens his mouth to instead ask what he wants, but Moriarty beats him to it; _“have you found Veidt’s computer?”_ he asks, and suddenly this random, pointless waste of an evening doesn’t seem quite so random or pointless at all. He scans the room quickly, flicking on the main light, and spots a Macbook hastily abandoned on a sofa near the bedroom door.

“Got it,” he quietly replies, and crosses the room in an instant. He mutes the speakers and boots up. “Password?”

Silence for a moment; then, _“try Alfa India Romeo.”_ Thinking Moriarty is using the terms for his sake, Sebastian tries “ _air_ ”, to no avail; then, feeling foolish, he tries the whole phrase, and the computer welcomes him in. _“Look for a folder with a date in mid-June,”_ Moriarty continues, and Sebastian can’t help but think he sounds amused.

“The 18th? Otherwise... the 3rd or the 29th.”

_“The 18 th. Copy it.”_

He slides a USB into the computer and copies the files, unplugs it and shuts the computer down. “Done,” he says, and stands, taking care to rearrange the sofa in the haphazard fashion he found it in.

 _“Good,”_ Moriarty murmurs in reply, and Sebastian finds his eyes slide shut, his mouth runs dry.

Sebastian digs his fingernails hard into his palm and opens his eyes. “You still don’t want me to kill him?” he asks, once his heart resettles a little.

Moriarty chuckles darkly. _“Not him. There will be others.”_

“And the files?”

_“I’ll come for them on Monday. Have a good weekend, Colonel Moran.”_

Sebastian stands in the middle of the flat, silent save for the roaring snores of Marcus Veidt. He stares down at the thin, plastic stick that lies across his palm; he's surprised to find his hands are shaking. He stills them, bunches them into fists, wedges them into his pockets. He flicks off the light and locks the door, and he knows when he leaves there’ll be no sign he’s been and gone.

 

 

 

On Saturday, Daisy and Cathy invite themselves to his for dinner. He can’t say he’s surprised; if anything, it’s shocking his mother doesn’t turn up as well. He cooks confit de canard because it’s simple and boring and he knows that they like it, and he bustles quietly around the kitchen alone as the two of them complain loudly about the unfairness of Sebastian’s life and the disgusting state of Saturday night television.

“Don’t get me wrong,” Daisy says, her mouth split into a smile and her eyes ever so slightly out of focus, “I love you, Cathy, I really do. I’m just saying that if I had access to three hundred and sixteen channels like this _bastard_ here – ” She gestures vaguely in his direction. “ – then I’d rarely bother to socialise with anyone either.”

He sends her a withering look as he walks out of the kitchen, their plates teetering in his hands. “I’ve had a busy week,” he says apologetically, and stoops to kiss the crown of her head before returning to the kitchen for the drinks.

“Get you,” Cathy calls, and Daisy snorts, shaking her head. “How is the new boss, anyway?”

Sebastian thinks of Jim Moriarty standing in his living room in his three-piece suit, the sharpness of his eyes, the coldness of his voice. He allows himself a private smile. “Alright,” he noncommittally replies, and rejoins them with the wine. “Bit dull. Interesting deadlines.”

The two women share a look, eyebrows raised, and Cathy takes the bottle off him to open it up with a small smile. “We’ve got a temp in at the moment,” she says to Daisy as she pours her a glass. “Just while Natalie’s on maternity leave. She’s a right cow. Trying to “ _rebuild the company from bottom to top_ ” when she can’t even tell her arse from her elbow at times.”

Daisy rolls her eyes, tsks in sympathy. “I know the type. We had this woman called Pamela come in and run our office for a week when Howard broke his leg. Christ, I’ve never been so stressed. Did you get the Hounslow brief done in time, by the way?”

“ _Jesus_ , I forgot I hadn’t told you – ”

Sebastian efficiently tunes them out, drops his eyes down to his dinner instead. He’s used to the two of them using him as an excuse to catch up with one another, and though his lack of interest will likely earn him a bollocking later, he’s happy to let that happen. They talk on through dinner, through dessert, through another bottle of wine, and it’s only when Cathy dozes off on the couch while Daisy plays idly with Sebastian’s hair that Cathy lets them call her a cab.

Daisy tugs her tired feet out of her heels and helps him clear up, sliding around the kitchen on her stockinged feet and giggling a little as she sings something Sebastian vaguely recognises enough to know it’s off-key. She waits for him before going to bed, sat on top of the kitchen counter with her heels kicking idly at the door, and kisses him as he turns out the light, soft and ever-gentle. She looks tired; but even worse is the ageing sadness in her eyes, the way they betray a seriousness he doesn’t think he can face.

 

 

 

 

He sleeps soundly but briefly; he’s not yet past the on-off, irregular sleep he’d enjoyed in Afghanistan, doubts he ever truly will be. There’s thin white light peeking through the heavy clouds when he wakes, and he draws the forgotten curtains in his bedroom to allow Daisy a little more time in the dark. It’s barely six a.m.

He checks his phone when he comes into the kitchen, but he hasn’t any messages. He turns it around in his hand, fiddles absently, but doesn’t make the call. His laptop’s shut down on the kitchen table beside him, and he stares at it for a while, considers booting it up, plugging his retrieved USB in, curiosity gnawing on his insides – but he knows better than that. He’d been talking to Veidt for an hour or so before the man emptied his guts over Sebastian’s shoes, and though he was curiously reluctant to give away much about his life – he hadn’t expected Sebastian to be there, much to Sebastian’s surprise, who had assumed their meet to be engineered – he had gathered that his job was governmental. It’s clever; Veidt’s unlikely to remember even talking to another man, and certainly not being taken home by him. Even if he realised the files had been duplicated, he’d be too embarrassed to speak out.

Governmental. He looks down at the phone in his hand again, then absently back at his bedroom door; he can’t help but feel he’s in way out of his depth. He knows nothing of Alex Maccleson, the man he’d killed, the man whose flat he now owned, but he knows from his car, his paunch, and his home that he must have been well-off to say the least. _Christ_.

He glances across at his laptop again. Moriarty’s a fool if isn’t keeping an eye on his habits, and Sebastian can’t imagine a man less like a fool than him. He feels trapped, suddenly, caged, and he resists the urge to rip through the fittings to look for cameras, mikes, anything, but what would he do if he found them? Would he destroy them? Would he run?

He crosses to the window, stares out into the wakening city. Sebastian thinks of himself, a week and a half ago, stood in his father’s office, bored out of his skull. He thinks of the challenge he’d sent to an unknown man in the spacious hall of the club, and the danger he’d accepted when he’d walked into the Grosvenor hotel.

He catches sight of his eldritch reflection, rippling and twisting in the half-light. He’s here because he wants to be.

 

 

 

Moriarty doesn’t come for the USB himself on Monday morning, and Sebastian can’t say he’s surprised. He exchanges it for a sealed envelope with a dark-skinned, small woman, who takes it off him with an icy smile and leaves without a word. He thumbs open the envelope with a silent sigh, pulls out another photo of a stranger’s face, and his phone goes off in his pocket –

_FO, 2:30 p.m. Tail him. Note who he meets._

Sebastian frowns down at his phone. He wonders how sharply Moriarty expects his surveillance to start, and whether this man will be leaving the Foreign Office at half two or merely wandering the building for the next few hours. He’s given no clue as to how Sebastian’s supposed to get in the building; but he supposes ingenuity is what he’s paying him for.

His phone goes off again in his hand. _Do not kill him._ , he reads, and Sebastian smiles.

 

 

 

Sebastian dresses in the smartest suit he can find, drags an old trench coat of his father’s out of the back of the cupboard, and finds a battered-looking black briefcase from the brief spate of job-hunting he’d tried in his pre-army days. He takes the tube to Westminster and makes his way west in a crowd of identically-dressed businessmen, and when he reaches the high glass door of the entrance-way he squares his shoulders and walks through them like he owns the place. He’s an Oxbridge boy; he was born for this.

“Listen,” he says to the bored receptionist, “I’ve just come over for the day from the MoD and my fucking moron of a boss has waltzed off with my clearance badge, the stupid bint. I just need to pick up some files from the seventh floor – I left them in Vaisey’s office. Is there any chance I could – ?”

“No,” the receptionist replies, and turns back to his computer. Sebastian watches him for a moment and battles the urge to shout _do you know who my father is?_ , to little effect. He glances at the clock; two twenty-four. The receptionist looks back up. “Are you still here?”

“Evidently,” Sebastian replies, with gritted teeth. “Look, I don’t mind if I don’t go get the files myself, but I need them for tonight. They’re black and white, printed on A4, the file’s manila, about this size – ”

“The MoD, you say,” the receptionist interrupts.

“Yes,” Sebastian says, rolling his eyes. “So as you can imagine, it’s _quite_ important.”

He narrows his eyes. “One moment, please,” he says, and leaves his desk for a room in the back. Sebastian gestures elegantly with his hand and steps back, the very picture of impatience. It’s not hard to actualise; the clock is showing two twenty-seven. He’s kept waiting for another minute and a half, and then the receptionist re-emerges with a swipecard in his hand. “You have fifteen minutes,” he says, and Sebastian takes it off him with a sickeningly sweet smile and marches towards the double doors.

He waits until he’s halfway up a flight of stairs to pause, let out a long, shaky breath and flash a brief smile. He knew there was a Gerald Vaisey with an office on the seventh floor, but aside from that he had nothing. He hasn’t a clue what he’ll do if it hits two forty-five and his mark is still firmly inside the FO, but he’ll hit that when he comes to it.

He glances down at his watch; two thirty-one. He looks around the stairwell and frowns; he’s no idea where or when the man whose face he’s memorised will appear. He fishes his phone out of his pocket, and as he’s debating whether it’s worth sending a message for clarification, he’s alerted to the arrival of the lift on the floor below by the soft _ping_ of the doors springing open. He hangs out over the banister and recognises his mark immediately at the centre of a cluster of men and women, and he bolts back down the stairs, arrives in the lobby just as they head out of the door.

He hands the receptionist his unused swipecard with another thin smile, and follows the group out into the courtyard beyond; he makes a note of as many faces as he can, but him and two others break away and head down onto Horse Guards Road to try for a cab. “Follow them,” he says to the driver of a second taxi as he climbs inside with an apologetic smile. “I’ve forgotten the address.”

He spends the journey making a rough sketch of the faces he remembers, with a little more detail given on the man and woman who had followed his mark into the car. He notes the cab registration number and the route they take through London, eventually stopping outside an expensive-looking café near Soho; luckily, his cab is forced to park a little further back than theirs, and Sebastian deliberately fumbles with his wallet to ensure they don’t spot him arriving in their wake.

The rest of the day is, by comparison, boring. He follows the stout little man from place to place, takes a photo of the people he meets where he can and sketches them when he can’t. He follows the man til nightfall, when he heads back to a set of sleek Hammersmith apartments and is ceremoniously ushered through the front door. Sebastian breaks into a car parked across the street and watches as, one by one, the lights in the house wink out, and when finally at around half ten the bedroom light switches off he trusts it safe to head home himself.

His own flat is dark and silent when he unlocks the door. He checks his alarm is undisturbed, then flicks on the light and deadlocks the door. He hadn’t invited Daisy to stay; he hadn’t known when he’d be home, and she’d acted strangely through all of yesterday before she’d left, more reserved than usual, sending him these soft, quiet looks when she thought he wasn’t looking. It had set his teeth on edge.

 

 

 

He never learns the name of the man from the Foreign Office, but the dry, dull, monotonous nature of the task defines his life for weeks to come. Moriarty doesn’t ask him to kill again for two whole months. Sebastian’s trapped in a never-ending cycle of tedious, meaningless jobs; to put it simply, he stagnates. He thinks of the cool, clean calm he felt in a flat in Hackney some weeks before, how his mind had felt clear for the first time since he was forced from Afghanistan; the rage and the frustration is bunching up again beneath his skin, crawling along his limbs, making his insides feel both raw and rotten.

It’s occurred to him he’s addicted. He’s killed on command for the last ten years of his life; his life’s work is the sharpness of his aim. To be denied the chance to do so now is slowly but surely ruining him.

Eventually, finally, Moriarty himself comes with a new task, and Sebastian hates the knowing smirk he has all over his face when he steps forward, folded paper in hand. Sebastian’s lived amongst junkies before, and he wonders whether Moriarty recognises in him the same signs Sebastian had seen in them; the rotten tiredness in their eyes, the slight tremble of their hand. He feels fucking weak, and he hates it. When he all but snatches the paper from out of Moriarty’s hand, he can’t help but wonder whether this was his plan all along.

 

 

 

His target is a dark-skinned woman, mid-twenties, with tired eyes; she reminds him uncomfortably of Cathy. In the photo she wears her long, dark hair tightly pinned back, but when Sebastian tails her to the entrance of a posh-looking restaurant in the arse-end of Richmond she’s let it fall down in loose, sweeping waves down her back, around her face. She’s wearing a figure-hugging dark green dress, and she looks beautiful.

He knows she’ll have to cross the river to make her way back home, and so he hires a boat from a vendor a little upstream and rows his way onto Corporation Island once the light drops low. His muscles slide easily back into the motions he’d learnt for the first time at university, decades ago, and he finds the rhythmic push-and-pull almost comforting.

He sets up camp amongst the tiny cluster of trees, and waits. Sebastian has watched her walk home from work every day for the last week; he knows her route by heart, knows she will invariably walk along the right-hand side of the road. He sits, and he waits, and he almost wills her to change her routine, to cross the road, to enjoy, just for tonight, the eastward view, and not the westward; but as the hand on his watch creeps towards ten, he spies her stepping out onto the bridge as usual. A heavy firmness settles across his shoulders, and he lets any thoughts of mercy slide.

She pauses in the middle, goes into her handbag for a cigarette; he’s never seen her smoke before. He wonders if the habit is intermittent or novel. She stares for a moment out at the river, looking tired and troubled, and her dark black hair and her dark green dress are tugged about lazily by the late evening wind; then she lifts her lighter up to her face, and the quick flash of flame is more of a target than Sebastian had hoped for. He pulls the trigger, and she drops like a stone.


	3. Chapter 3

More often than not it’s some faceless, nameless lackey who hands Sebastian his instructions, rather than the man himself; so when he lets himself into the flat one Saturday afternoon, Daisy in tow, he’s more than a little surprised to find Moriarty perched across his armchair, eating a bag of crisps he’s fairly sure is from Sebastian’s kitchen cupboard and flicking through the channels on his newly-acquired, ridiculously large HDTV.

He freezes in the hallway, bites down the urge to tell Daisy to run. She peers around him with confusion in her eyes, and Moriarty gives her a sickeningly sweet smile. “Who’s this?” she asks, and Sebastian steers her into the kitchen, wrestles the shopping bags out of her hands. “Ow, _Sebastian_ – ”

“Someone from work,” he says, as quickly and as quietly as he can, stacking the bags on the side and smoothing the thighs of his jeans with his suddenly sweaty palms.

“Work?” she snaps, glaring at him angrily. “Seb, it’s six p.m. on a Saturday, do _not_ tell me you have to – ”

“Daisy – ”

She shakes her head, runs her hands through her hair. She grabs her keys up from the counter, and marches into the hallway to fetch her coat. “No, go on, it’s fine, I’m sure it’s terribly important, I’m sure there’s been some, some fatal lighthouse breakdown in Hull they’re keeping out of the news to keep panic at bay.” She rejects his attempt to kiss her, and slams the front door in his face. He stares at it blankly for a moment, wishing he’d neglected to take off the dampener after all.

Moriarty is stood by the window when he walks through into the living room; his face is deliberately and mockingly blank. “I wasn’t expecting you,” Sebastian says evenly, noting with mild irritation the crumpled crisp packet tossed carelessly onto his glass-topped coffee table, surrounded by several greasy-looking smears.

“I need you in person tonight,” Moriarty says with a nonchalant smile, and Sebastian briefly battles to keep his face free from surprise. “Oh, don’t worry, you won’t have to say anything, I just need you to loiter behind me looking all big and brutish. It shouldn’t be too taxing.”

Sebastian nods, thinking of the food slowly defrosting in his kitchen, the dinner with Daisy he’d planned. “When should – ?”

“Now,” Moriarty interrupts, reaching for the remote and turning his attention back to the television. “Go put on some clothes. Don’t be long.”

Well, he thinks. That’s dinner off the cards. Sebastian walks wordlessly over to the bedroom, trying and failing to decipher what on earth he means by _some clothes_ ; he drags on something halfway between smart-casual and funeralwear, makes sure his hair is roughly sensible, and puts on his sturdiest pair of shoes. Judging by the fact Moriarty fails to pass comment when he re-enters the living room he’s aimed it just about right.

There’s a sleek black car waiting for them outside, and they spend the journey in silence, Moriarty not once looking up from his equally sleek, equally black smartphone. They pull up outside a hotel he doesn’t know on Bayswater Road, and are ushered without comment through to a small, plushly-decorated room where they are left, momentarily, alone; it’s a conference room of some sort, with a large black table squats along one side of the room, a whiteboard propped up precariously at its side. It is otherwise empty, save for a well-stocked minibar just to the side of the door they entered through. Moriarty slides his smartphone back into his jacket pocket and glances across at Sebastian, rolling his eyes. “Don’t fidget so,” he mutters, tone icily cold, and then slides the palm of his hand across his scalp; Sebastian watches this all unfold with mild surprise. Anyone else and he’d say they were nervous.

A thin, well-dressed man enters through a door to one side, and he strides across the room with a purposeful, loping stride. “Michael,” he says, his accent American, his voice smooth and warm, and Moriarty shakes his hand, returns his kindly smile with a broad one of his own. He doesn’t so much as glance Sebastian’s way, and Sebastian takes an immediate disliking to him. “So _good_ to see you. What can I get you to drink?”

The unnamed American walks across to the aforementioned minibar, fishes himself a bottle of whisky, and upends it plentifully into a tumbler he balances on top. Beside him, Moriarty perfectly affects a stance of diffidence, raises both hands and says “no, thank you, no,” in the crispest Welsh accent Sebastian has ever heard; it takes a reasonable amount of his self-control not to turn and openly stare at him.

The American lets off a charming, toothy smile. “Always about the business with you! I love it, I really do.” He crosses to the conference table, pulls out a chair, gestures for Moriarty to join him. “Now. What is it exactly I can do for you?”

As they talk, Sebastian floats purposelessly in the corner, does his best to look grim and foreboding, hopes it doesn’t come across as constipated. Their conversation means little to him, a whirl of names and numbers he vaguely follows; he’s far more interested in the quiet, timid Welshman Moriarty is wearing as easily as if it were his own skin, the smattering of tics and tells he gives him which are so very unlike his own. The meeting wraps up around the time Sebastian’s knees begin to ache, and Moriarty bids the man farewell with a shy but sincere smile; Sebastian alone gets to watch this drop neatly off his face the moment the American leaves the room. Moriarty fetches out his phone almost before the door has swung shut in his wake, and Sebastian follows him back through to the front of the hotel, trying to keep his own expression a careful, neutral calm.

They hover outside on Bayswater Road, waiting for the car to rejoin them. Moriarty once again puts away his phone, and he glances over at Sebastian, an unreadable look in his eyes. “How would you feel if I asked you to break a man’s leg?”

Sebastian stares back for a moment, lost for words. “Amenable,” he eventually decides, and Moriarty’s mouth warps into a wide, cruel smile.

They drive to a smart-looking house in Mayfair, and Moriarty lets himself in with one of many keys from a chain in his pocket. The ground floor of the house is dark, but light spills out the hallway above; Moriarty nudges open a cupboard to the right of the front door, rummages inside for a moment, and hands Sebastian a golf club. He knows better than to ask what it’s for.

He follows Moriarty up the stairs, keeps his footsteps as quiet as he can; Moriarty’s tread is catlike, silent and soft. On reaching the landing, Moriarty ignores a second set of stairs trailing off to one side to head for the door ajar at the end of the hall. “ _Cyril_ ,” he trills as he saunters inside, and to Sebastian it sounds farcical, as obviously fake as the timid Welshman he’d worn before; but when Sebastian joins him upstairs the portly, middle-aged man he assumes to be Cyril is frozen in the middle of the room, his hair unkempt, his glasses askew over his wide, panicked eyes. His mouth is struggling around half-formed words, backing away towards the window, and Moriarty hounds him into a corner with step after steady step. “Cyril, tell me it’s here.”

Cyril gapes between the two of them, runs his trembling hands through his hair. “P-please,” he stammers, the blood draining from his face.

As Moriarty shortens the distance with another deliberate step, Sebastian hears a tell-tale scuffle from upstairs; too heavy to be a dog, could be a lighter person – a child, perhaps. Just as he’s wondering whether Moriarty’s heard it, his companion freezes mid-stride and tilts his head. “Is that Alexia?”

The man’s eyes flash comically wide, and he half-garbles a word, shakes his head harder, great, fat, blubbery tears beginning to spill down his face. Moriarty looks back at Sebastian, nods towards the door, and Cyril lets out a quiet, desperate cry, another litany of no, please, please, _Christ_ , no –

Sebastian stays frozen in the middle of the room, his fingers sweaty and clammy around the warming metal of the golf club. This man, this Cyril, he finds him repugnant, has no qualms about swinging the back of it neatly down across the man’s leg – but a child? A little girl?

He isn’t forced to decide; Moriarty lifts his hand and beckons him forwards with a brief twitch of his fingers. Sebastian quickly crosses the room, flexing his fingers around the embossed leather handle, and he brings it down in a single, strong stroke across the man’s thigh. Cyril’s eyes fly wide, his whole body buckling with agony, but he jams his fist in his mouth to muffle his scream; he falls awkwardly to the ground, twisting around on his unbroken leg, and Moriarty paces around to squat by his head, looks down at him with a merciless smile. “Wednesday, please,” he says, quite calmly, and then gestures back at Sebastian with one hand. “I’m sure I needn’t clarify as to the consequences of you failing to be punctual.”

Moriarty stands, looks around the room once more, his fingers absently adjusting his cuffs; then he grants Cyril one final, dazzling smile and walks purposefully from the room. Sebastian stares down at the club in his hand, feeling dazed, half-awake; he pulls out a tissue from a box he spots nearby and carefully wipes the thing clean before dropping it on the floor beside the still-whimpering Cyril. He resists the urge to bid the trembling, sweaty man a pleasant evening as he too silently leaves the room.

“Took your fucking time,” Moriarty snaps as Sebastian climbs into the back of the car. “If you take that long again I won’t wait for you.” Sebastian decides it’s in his best interests not to reply, and instead he smoothes his palms across his thighs, trains his gaze carefully out into the middle distance. It takes everything he has not to break out into violent, convulsing shivers, but he will not let any weakness show.

Moriarty has already reoccupied himself with his phone, though his brow is now creased a little in anger. He allows himself to let out a long, steady breath. He wonders if Moriarty would have made him hurt the girl if it had come to it; whether he would have done it, or whether he would have disobeyed. He finds, with not a little fear, he honestly can’t make the call.

The car shudders to a halt outside of Green Park. Sebastian takes it as the dismissal it is and leaves without a word.

 

 

 

Moriarty keeps up his steady stream of tasks, but intersperses them with work at his side as well; Sebastian watches in quiet awe as Moriarty plays every role under the sun in every restaurant, hotel, bank, office in London, sometimes quiet and shy and helpful, other times sinister and cold and cruel. Sebastian still fails to see any pattern in it, fails to know much of the context of the situations which he finds himself helplessly thrown into, but he learns quite efficiently where and how to stand in a room to most frighten a man, how to neatly break someone’s fingers, where best to keep his gun.

There’s no rhyme or reason to what Moriarty asks him to do; he supposes the man can’t run the risk of being predictable. Last night, for instance, he’d been balanced on some godforsaken rooftop, waiting for a nameless banker-type to step neatly in front of his crosshairs; but the night before that he’d spent cataloguing crates in a warehouse in Shoreditch, unaware of their contents but assured of the ramifications of anything other than a flawless job. The night before that, he’d followed Moriarty around a series of establishments in random parts of London (Islington, Wandsworth, Greenwich), spending most of the time lurking in the background, throwing casual but meaningful glares at the litany of ill-mannered scum Moriarty chooses to associate himself with.

Today, however, he’s alone, as he most often is, and he’s thankfully on some thankless errand and firmly apart from Jim Moriarty when he stands in a queue in Costa and hears a familiar voice saying, “Seb? Sebastian?”

Sebastian suppresses a wince, turns on his heel and walks quickly towards the door – but Cathy catches him in the street beyond, grabs hold of his arm with a slim, soft hand, and he’s forced to turn and face her. Her eyes are shocked and wide, her mouth twisted with concern, and she pulls him into a quick, tight hug. “Jesus, Sebastian,” she says, her voice shaking a little. “You look awful.”

He arches an eyebrow, glances down at his watch. “Thanks,” he deadpans, and takes a step back, sliding on a forced, nonchalant smile. “Listen – I have to – ” He gestures absently down the road. “Sorry, why don’t you give me a call – ?”

“Give you a call?” she echoes incredulously, staring at him like he’s grown another head. “Seb, I’ve been ringing you for days! I nearly came round to your flat, but Daisy said you’re hardly there anymore anyway – ”

“It’s just work,” he interrupts, stretching his smile, “I’m just – busy, _really_ busy. Honestly, I’m fine. I really do have to go.”

He turns from her and ducks into a nearby cab caught at the traffic lights, all in one smooth motion. He gives the driver an address just down the road and settles back in his seat; he tries to remember the last time he’d seen her, but the days have all blurred seamlessly into one. He sees as many two a.m.s as two p.m.s these days, and dates and days have become meaningless unless Moriarty requires him to remember them.

He climbs out of the cab and shoves a fiver at the driver, tells him to keep the change. Sebastian scowls at nothing and no-one, his brow furrowing in a tight, hard line; he knows what he did to Cathy was cruel, recognises this on some absent level, but he seethes with annoyance at her interruption. He hadn’t thankfully been tasked to tail someone, but if he had, she would have blown him out of the water. His blood boils at the thought.

He feels his phone vibrate in his pocket, and he pulls it out to read the message: _Drop Williams. Meet Richardson at the BM at 4:45._ His scowl deepens, and he flicks his collar up against the cold. Fucking perfect, he thinks. Now he has to put up with Jeff fucking Richardson as well.

 

 

 

It’s the first weekend in June when Moriarty hands him a set of gold knuckledusters in a plastic bag with a thin, ingratiating smile. Sebastian feels the weight and the warmth of them resting across the palm of his hand, looks back up at him, and asks, calmly, “do you want them dead?”

Moriarty’s smile grows wicked. “Mmm,” he says, and waves his hand so-so. “Not _quite_.”

 

 

 

He makes it home by four a.m. The final lick of adrenaline has now fully left his bloodstream, leaving him tired and raw. He spots a small figure slumped up against his front door as he rounds the final flight of steps and walks out onto the corridor; it’s Daisy, her tiny frame curled into a ball, her head dropped uncomfortably onto her knees from when she nodded off. He wonders how long she’s been waiting there.

She stirs as he leans down and kisses the crown of her head, and she lets him lead her through into the living room, lit only by the eldritch amber streetlight from the city beyond. He crosses through to the bedroom, deeply grateful for his huge, grey overcoat; his shirt and jeans are still sticky and soiled with blood. He strips them off, hides them in a mound of more incongruous laundry, and turns back to the living room, running his hand through his hair.

Daisy is still standing in the middle of his living room, her arms around her chest, looking small and lost, and Sebastian bites back an irritated sigh. “I’m going for a shower,” he says. “You coming?”

For a moment, she looks like she might argue; then she shakes her head, heads off towards the bedroom alone. Sebastian stands underneath the falling water for a while, cranks it up as hot as he can stand. He has no name for the man he almost-killed tonight; knows nothing about him save what fear and panic and despair look like trapped inside his eyes. He finishes his shower, and his ears seem to ring in the echoing silence when he shuts the water off.

Daisy’s gone when he wakes; he didn’t hear her go. He has one message waiting for him: _Excellent work, Col. Moran._ , he reads, and he smiles.

 

 

 

“I look like a fucking butler,” Sebastian snaps, and Moriarty’s grin turns sly.

Sebastian rolls his eyes, turns his attention back to his bedroom mirror. He’s not worn white tie since his Oxford days, since a series of farcically expensive balls he was forcibly dragged along to, and he didn’t need much of a reminder as to why; he feels, and looks, like a fucking clown. Moriarty, of course, looks wonderfully suave, settling into the suit as if it were a second skin. Sebastian has seen him wear the lives of many men in the months he’s known him; Michael the incompetent Welshman; Harry the bratty public schoolboy; Richard the shy actor; Jason the smooth-voiced Californian; but here he looks completely, utterly comfortable. Sebastian, naturally, takes this as a personal offence. Moriarty sneers, murmurs, “I must make you do this more often.” Sebastian sends him a long, hard glare, and Moriarty’s mouth twists gleefully.

Tonight, Sebastian is going to kill a man, but Moriarty has apparently decided that a sniper rifle at four hundred yards is too passé, and he’s being forced to cavort around at some posh prick’s masturbatory celebration firsthand. He has not, naturally, voiced such thoughts out loud, but he imagines from the warped delight dancing quite plainly across Moriarty’s face he is more than aware of Sebastian’s opinions.

The soirée is at the house of one Richard Smythe, a sprawling, four-storey affair in the heart of Mayfair, and his target is Roger Tewksbury, a Tory back-bencher and Smythe’s oldest friend; Harrow, then Cambridge, then a job in the city, all side by side. Sebastian personally went to school with a current member of the Cabinet and a media tycoon, amongst others, but he’d never had the guts to ally himself with people he couldn’t stand, much to his father’s dismay.

He has no idea how Moriarty acquired an invitation, or who precisely Sebastian is supposed to be, but when they step up to the threshold at seven forty-five they’re greeted by nothing but large, welcoming smiles. Sebastian feels a heavy, familiar weight settle over him the moment he walks into the spacious parlour, filled with suavely-dressed, svelte women clutching the arms of well-moustached, portly men. He snatches something fizzy off a tray held aloft by a bored-looking young waiter, downs it in one; his mood turns murderous when he realises it’s elderflower pressé. Moriarty looks almost gleeful when he notices the strength of Sebastian’s glower. “Now, now,” he murmurs, guiding them into the farthest corner of the room before Sebastian murders the waiter. “Behave.”

Sebastian scowls, but doesn’t reply. His childhood was largely formed of endless events such as this, although his father never merited such a prestigious crowd; he learnt from an early age that the immediate consumption of alcohol is the best method of keeping insanity at bay. He glances down at his watch, bites back a groan. Tewksbury isn’t supposed to be heading towards the drawing-room until half ten. “Any chance I can hurry this along?” he mutters, rubbing his eyes. “I could offer to get on my knees if all you’re looking for is a chance to get him on his own.”

Beside him, Moriarty goes perfectly still; Sebastian glances across at him, mildly surprised, and instantly regrets it. _If looks could kill_ , he thinks to himself, almost amused, and then finds himself absently wondering whether he’s valuable enough yet to prevent Moriarty from having him murdered at the end of the night. He hastily swallows his smirk. “Stick to the plan, Moran,” Moriarty icily replies, and then he stalks away, instantly swallowed by the penguin-patterned crowd. Sebastian stares after him for a moment, bemused, and wonders whether he’s supposed to be following. Fuck it, he decides. They have over two hours to kill. What he could really do with is a drink.

A lap of the room informs him there’s a small huddle of waiters off to one side with variously laden trays, and this time he chooses a little more carefully from the towering cluster of flutes, ensures he’s drinking at least something vaguely like alcohol. As he moves back to his corner, one eye on the crowd for Jim, he notices that he himself is being watched; a tall, olive-skinned woman alone by the fireplace is staring at him unabashedly from the other side of the room. He raises his glass to her, and she smiles, does the same. He scans the room twice again, and, with no sign of his employer, he decides to default to universal civility and crosses the room.

She watches him approach, one eyebrow raised. As he nears her she turns to place her glass on the mantelpiece, and he finds himself watching the way her hair gathers and curls around the hollow of her throat. “I don’t know you,” she says as he stands by her side, her tone warm and amused.

Her smile is charming and broad, and Sebastian finds himself echoing it. “Is that a bad thing?”

She shrugs one shoulder slowly. “Depends,” she replies. “It’s either because you’re no-one important, or, conversely, you’re far more important than the people I know.”

Sebastian snorts. “The former, I assure you.” He holds out his hand, and she takes it; her fingers are small, but her grip is impossibly firm. “Adrien Stewart.”

She smiles. “Vivian Burnett. Charmed.”

Just as he opens his mouth to ask where she’s from, he feels his phone begin to vibrate angrily in his pocket. He rolls his eyes and pulls it out to see whether he needs to take the call; to his surprise, it’s smaller and thicker than usual, and the name on the screen reads _Daisy – Home_. He scowls down at it, cancels the call. He must have left his other phone at home; he hopes Moriarty isn’t attempting to reach him on it, or later there’ll be hell to pay. He smiles apologetically at Vivian. “Nothing important,” he says, and places his now-empty glass on the mantelpiece beside hers. “Now, are – ”

He’s interrupted almost immediately by the buzzing of his phone again; Vivian arches a perfect eyebrow. “Obviously important after all.” He fishes it out his pocket; _Daisy – Home_. “Don’t let me keep you.”

He shakes his head, rolls his eyes. “It was nice to meet you, Vicky,” he says absently, turning towards the door, and he only half-hears her correct him as he leaves the room. He’s trying to remember the last time he saw Daisy; a few days ago, he’s sure of it. Last week, definitely. “Yes?” he snaps into the phone, once he’s in the considerably quieter hallway, and for a moment there’s nothing but quiet scuffling on the other end. “I’m at work, you know – ”

 _“I know,”_ she replies, and her voice sounds warped and soft, like she’s crying. _“Seb, I – can you – ?”_ She breaks off into a gulping sob, and Sebastian drums the fingers of his free hand on his thighs. _“Seb, my dad, my dad’s dead.”_

Sebastian resists the urge to roll his eyes skyward. _Fuck_. Talk about bad timing. He glances down at his watch; eight twenty-four. If he goes now, he could go and be back before ten – but will Daisy let him leave? Not likely. As he glances back into the parlour, he spots Moriarty watching him from across the room, and he’s grabbed by the urge to do something stupid. “I’m coming over,” he says, his eyes still locked with Jim’s. He hangs up, turns on his heel, and walks out onto the street beyond.

Daisy’s moved from Holborn to the arse-end of Aldgate, though he can’t exactly remember when or why; with Saturday night traffic it’s quarter-past nine before he’s climbing stairs that reek thickly of piss and turning onto her dimly-lit corridor. She folds into his arms once she opens the door, her eyes red and puffy, her face smeared with tears. She smells unpleasantly sharp and sanitary; hospital, he assumes. He manages to guide her through to the living room, pushes her down onto her squeaky leather sofa and presses a box of tissues into her hand. He pulls off his evening tails to stop them getting rumpled, hopes absently she doesn’t make a mess of the rest of his suit.

Daisy takes a handful of tissues gratefully, presses them to her face, and her never-ending litany of words is thankfully muffled because of it; he pats her absently on the arm, pushes in consoling sounds and words every time she draws a breath. She eventually quietens, her breath calming in her chest, and he takes the advantage to smooth some of her greasy hair from out of her eyes. “I know it must’ve been a shock,” he says, resisting the urge to glance down at his watch, “but – ”

She goes very still under his hands. “A shock?” she repeats incredulously, her voice breaking a little on the word. “Sebastian, he’s been in a coma for three months.”

Fuck. He’s sure he’d known that, sure she’d mentioned it; “I know,” he says quickly, trying to backtrack, “I just – ”

– but she’s staring at him, her eyes clouding with rage, and she snaps her hand back from his to cover her mouth. “You had no idea,” she says, her voice dangerously calm. “All this time, I thought you were just, I don’t know, trying to make me feel everything was normal – but you’ve not listened to a single word I’ve said, have you?”

Sebastian watches her in silence; he makes no attempt to come to his own defence. She coughs out a laugh, raw and disbelieving, and a glance at his watch tells him it’s nine thirty-three. She stands up, runs her hands through her short, greasy hair. He doesn’t remember when she got it cut. “I should’ve done something,” she says, shaking her head, “I should’ve done something when you got back from Afghanistan, when you didn’t eat or sleep for days – I thought with this new job, with something to focus on, you might – ”

Sebastian stands and shrugs on his tails; her eyes briefly widen and narrow again, the transition almost imperceptible. “Thank you for your concern,” he says, coldly. “I’m fine. I’m sorry about your father.”

“You’re fine?” she echoes incredulously, her shoulders shaking with rage. “You – you come home from Afghanistan a, a fucking _war criminal_ , and we’re suddenly shagging in every single room of your fucking impossible flat but you don’t say two words to me for days – and you’re _fine_? You think that’s fucking _normal_ – ?” She breaks off mid-sentence, presses her hand to her mouth. “I just – _Seb_.” She pulls in a long, slow breath. “I need you – to go. We can – I want to – we can talk. Tomorrow. But.” She closes her eyes, points at the door. “ _Please_.”

Sebastian leaves without a word.

The traffic is lighter on the road, but not light enough. He takes the tube from Aldgate East to Green Park, gets stuck for fifteen fucking minutes at Westminster, reaches Piccadilly at ten twenty-three; he runs the rest of the way, rounds the corner of Smythe’s road just before half past. The boy on the door doesn’t recognise him, but the look in his eye apparently stays any comment, and he pushes through without hindrance. He takes the stairs three at the time, paces down the velvet-lined hallway without thought, and finds Moriarty waiting in the drawing-room at the end of the hall.

“What the fuck was that, Moran?” he asks the moment Sebastian steps through the door, but Sebastian ignores him, pulls on the leather gloves from his pocket, paces across the room to pull out the carefully secreted gun, suppressor in hand. “Did he see – ?”

“No,” he interrupts, and goes to stand by the door, holds himself perfectly still, listens for footsteps in the corridor. Two on the stairs; a man and a woman’s. The woman breaks away, heads towards the other end, but the man draws closer. The handle turns; the door opens. Sebastian waits for a heartbeat or two, just to check it is Tewksbury, then brings the butt of his gun down hard on the man’s head. He hears something crack; Tewksbury falls; Sebastian paces a few feet away to save his tails, braces, and shoots him twice in the head.

Sebastian straightens up, puts down the gun. He pulls off his gloves, runs his hand through his hair; he feels perfectly calm. He can see from the corner of his eye Moriarty is watching him, his expression unreadable, and he pulls on his glove again to pick up the gun and hand it to him. “Satisfied?” he asks, and Moriarty stares blankly back at him. Sebastian rolls his eyes. “Do I need to put this somewhere?”

Moriarty looks away, points. “Desk drawer.”

Sebastian crosses the room, wipes the handle once more for good measure and drops it inside. Moriarty is looking at him again, and his impassive, expressionless gaze is somehow infuriating. “Are we done?”

Moriarty pauses, nods. “We’re done.”

There’s a car waiting for them when they walk out onto the road, but Sebastian turns away from him wordlessly and walks off into the night. He means to catch the tube, but the noisiness of the late evening crowd grates across his nerves; he cuts down Piccadilly and then St James’, Pall Mall down to Trafalgar Square. His feet ache in the tight, uncomfortable shoes, but it’s a raw, sharp pain he almost likes, a discomfort he can focus on.

He pauses for a moment on Hungerford Bridge, watches the Eye twirl uselessly round. He sucks in a breath of the dank, mouldy air, closes his eyes –

–  _war criminal –  didn’t ask you to be here – damned ungrateful_ –

– opens them. Further down the bridge, there’s a policeman glancing his way, nervous. He wonders what he must look like. Sebastian pushes away from the rail, marches past him without a word.

 

 

 

Sebastian sleeps no more than four hours in all; he lies half-awake and restless with fury for most of the night, though what or who precisely he’s angry at he can’t say. He’s jolted back awake at eight by loud pounding on his front door; he stares at the clock, the small, red numbers emitting an evil little glow, and decides, after five minutes or so, they probably aren’t going to leave. He wonders, briefly, about taking a weapon to answer it, but decides it’d be a piss-poor assassin that bangs on his door for twenty minutes before pulling a gun.

He regrets the decision when he opens the door and his mother barrels past him into the living room, leaving the cold, dead scent of sweat, cigarettes, and alcohol lingering in a fug behind her. He lets the door slam, briefly closes his eyes, and then follows her through. 

He finds her standing in the middle of the room, gaping around her with not a little wonder, but when he enters her rage is channelled entirely onto him. “You are a real piece of work,” she snarls, her voice thin and low, her eyes flashing with anger; he resists the urge to roll his eyes, feeling it’d only add to the melodrama. “I’ve spent all night at Daisy’s house – ” Oh, he thinks, blankly. That explains it. He leans against the wall, lets her rant and rage and scream, waits for her to get it out of her – but she cuts off mid-sentence, stares at him dully. “She said you did this,” she says, quietly. “Just go – blank. I thought she was reading you wrong, because you’d never – ” She breaks off, shakes her head. “ _Christ_.”

Sebastian raises an eyebrow. “Are you done?”

She sneers at him. “No, I am not fucking _done_ , don’t give me that glib bullshit.” She pauses to pull in a breath; her lips purse, the skin around them cracking into thousands of spiders’-webs. “I rang Cartwright today. Your employer.” Ah, Sebastian thinks. Fuck. “To see if I could get you some time off, seeing as you’ve been run ragged at all hours these last few months – and I bet you know what I found out; they’d never even heard of you. You never turned up.”

Sebastian shrugs. “What do you want me to say?”

“What do I want you to – ?” She shakes her head, laughs a little. “After what happened in Afghanistan, I turn up to find you living in a place like this, with no idea what you’ve been doing for _months_ – ”

Something snaps in him; something small but crucial. He walks across the room and raises his hand, points to the door. “Get out,” he says, perfectly calm. “Get out, or I will drag you out myself.”

She stares at him, her eyes thick with fear, her small shoulders still shaking with rage. For a moment, she almost looks fit to argue; then she shakes her head, crumples in on herself. He closes his eyes; hears footsteps in the hall; and then she’s gone.

He turns towards the river, jams the heel of his hand into his eyes, watches stars skitter and burst and fade. He’s so fucking _tired_ , but he feels caged, hounded, open at every side - he finds his phone on the kitchen counter, rings Jim’s number almost unthinkingly –

Moriarty answers instantly. “I need to leave,” Sebastian mutters, barely aware of what he’s saying. “I want to – go, I have to go.”

There’s a moment of silence. _“Come here,”_ Moriarty says. _“I’ll send you the address.”_

Sebastian ends the call. He staggers into the bedroom, pulls on a ramshackle selection of clothes. He pauses for a moment in the wide-windowed living room, stares mindlessly out at the view; he is jolted back awake by the buzzing of his phone in his hand. _85 Abingdon Road_. Kensington, he thinks. Of fucking course. He drops his keys on the kitchen counter and the front door slams in his wake.

 

 

 

Sebastian wakes in an unfamiliar bed. His head feels thick, his mouth dry and rotten; he can tell by the half-dwindling sunlight he’s slept away most of the day. He rolls out of bed, pulls on his discarded t-shirt and jeans, and takes the opportunity to look around. The room is spartan, with a sprawling double bed squatting in its centre, a wardrobe and a chest of drawers both in the same minimalist, pale pinewood, but otherwise completely bare. He has little memory of arriving at the Kensington townhouse; opening the bedroom door reveals him to be in the middle of a short corridor, two other rooms on either side. He resists the urge to snoop and heads for the stairs, deciding to make his thudding headache his priority. Moriarty is sat at the kitchen table, immaculately dressed, and doesn’t look up from his laptop when Sebastian walks in. Sebastian ignores him in turn to fetch a glass of water, downs it in one, refills. His voice feels raw, forgotten. “What time is it?”

“Just after four.”

Sebastian bites back a groan, rubs his eyes. “The Matheson meet.”

“Rescheduled.”

Sebastian mutters his thanks, turns back to the tap, furious with his own unprofessionalism; he’s waiting for a tirade from Moriarty over leaving Smythe’s last night. They still have dinner with Zhào at eight, and he’ll have to go back to the flat to change.

“Sebastian.” He glances over at Moriarty; he’s finally seen fit to look up from his laptop screen, and is staring at him with unsettling blankness. “Do you want them to be able to find you?”

Sebastian closes his eyes. He thinks of the cold rage in Daisy’s voice, the immeasurable fear in his mother’s eyes. He feels no guilt; just tiredness, a vast emptiness he can’t name. “No,” he answers, finally.

He wants to disappear entirely.

 

 

 

By the next morning, the sum of Sebastian’s possessions are sat in the spare room in a ramshackle pile of cardboard boxes. Moriarty has dissolved all his accounts, set him up a sporadic system of aliases and hedge funds, and dumped all of his identification in the Thames. He doubts very much his family will push any search through to the involvement of the police; but if they should do so, Moriarty has ultimate control over the Met – with certain exceptions.

He is free.


	4. Chapter 4

Sebastian initially assumes it to be a temporary arrangement; he spends a month or so living out of cardboard boxes, mutely waiting for the prompt to move on. When September slides into October and half of his things are recklessly scattered about the house, his books on Jim’s bookshelves, his tangle of cutlery and crockery strewn through the kitchen cupboards, it first occurs to him the order might not actually be coming.

 

 

 

A week and a half into November, Sebastian finds a neat stack of manila files balanced beside his ubiquitous place at the dining room table. Somewhat to his surprise, Moriarty has turned out to be something of a man of habit; thus he occupies his usual seat across the table, and affords him a humourless smile as Sebastian rests his arched fingertips on the topmost folder. “Candidates,” he explains, at Sebastian’s curious glance.

Sebastian flips open the first; Mikhail Limonov, ex-KGB, four years at Sandringham, dismissed in 2003. “For what?”

“Your replacement.” Sebastian stares at him, briefly startled; but he’s entirely sure that if Moriarty truly wanted him gone, he’d be dead and buried before he ever knew about it. The thin smile broadens further. “Consider it a promotion. First without daddy’s merit, I’d wager.”

Sebastian decidedly ignores him, drops Limonov to one side and lets the second file fall open in his hand. Yolanda Véizaga, ten years in the Bolivian Ejército. Recently dismissed. He’s seeing a pattern. “You’re pulling me out of the field?”

The smile is now firmly a shit-eating grin. “Not entirely. I know how _antsy_ you get when you’re not allowed to handle a gun.”

Sebastian knows better than to rise to it. If he’s honest, Jim has him run ragged; he could do with the help. He takes the files up to his room with a mug of tea, spreads them out across his bed, and reads them all in turn. It’s an impressive haul; he sometimes wonders whether there’s anyone in all of London Moriarty doesn’t know.

Eleven become nine on their files alone; and after an eventful evening with half a dozen Rangemasters in Regents Park he chooses Lei Feng, a twentysomething anthropology graduate who had turned to illegitimate means to fund a PhD, only to find herself remarkably competent at handling the criminal underclasses. She tends towards quick-tempered, but Sebastian’s not exactly a paragon of tranquillity himself, and there’s a controlled approach to her work that he likes.  He spends a month or so working at Feng’s side alongside his own assignments, but when he finds her efficient and thorough he leaves her to it. Jim himself never has anything to do with her.

 

 

 

Sebastian likes Feng; she’s quiet and able and extremely clever, excellent at instilling calm or terror as necessary. They make a good team – not perfect, but solid – and she knows on instinct when he wants her serious, when he’s happy for her to be less so. She also, much to his surprise, manages with great ease to maintain a private life; namely Canna, an MA Cantab tax accountant with a posh flat in Hampstead Heath, someone with no part in their world but whom Feng has been with for seven years now, someone who knows everything Feng does. Though every inch of Feng is charming as she says it, she makes it perfectly clear Sebastian will never meet her.

Sebastian does wonder whether he would have kept Daisy, if he had told her the truth. He sees her once, quite by chance, when he’s thankfully alone; she’s waiting at a bus stop on the other side of Oxford Street as he steps out of Selfridges, some expensive thing of Moriarty’s in a tiny yellow bag dangling from his arm. She doesn’t spot him. He loiters in the middle of the pavement, watches her from the middle of the crowd. Her hair has grown a little longer over the summer; she looks tired. She looks happy. A double-decker pulls up, and when it trundles away again into the thick late-evening traffic she is gone.

Moriarty is in his usual spot when Sebastian gets home, dressed in a suit more sombre than usual; his eyes look glazed and far away, the skin beneath them insomnia-bruised.  He’s not seen him in a day or so, but this in itself isn’t unusual. He places the bag on the table-top, resists the sudden, unaccountable urge to reach out, rest a hand on Jim’s shoulder, run his fingers through Jim’s hair. “If I make you something,” he says, quietly, “will you eat it?”

Jim seems to come back to himself; his eyes sharpen on Sebastian, though the tiredness in them doesn’t fade. He says nothing for a long while, until Sebastian is half-wondering whether to repeat himself, and then he nods, once, an uncharacteristically clumsy motion.

He makes them some variant on a pasta dish he’d lived on at uni; he’s barely half-awake himself, his mind on Daisy, on the street before. He had felt – something bitter, something not unlike regret when he’d seen her, when he’d recognised her face; but he hadn’t missed her since he’d left, not once.

 

 

 

For the most part, Sebastian deals with the middle men; Moriarty has their superiors, the lynchpins, though he will occasionally order Sebastian to loiter meaningfully in the back of a meeting or two. Generally, however, Moriarty will make a deal, and Sebastian will be tasked to see it through; but there is one notable exception. Moriarty has a prolific trade in underground antiquities from Turkey, Egypt, and the Middle East, and he insists quite thoroughly that Sebastian oversee its negotiations, due to his “previous experience” with the region. Jim being who he is, the phrase is never unleashed without a sting in its tail; Sebastian is thoroughly aware he’s being played.

Their contact is François Renaud, an unpleasant, lanky man with an inexorable, well-toothed, skidmark smile. He is, generally, not a problem child; his shipments are well-timed, his team well-organised, his prices reasonable, his manner courteous – but he still sets Sebastian's teeth on edge. His latest shipment arrives roughly a month or so after Sebastian picks Feng, and Sebastian decides to take the opportunity to be thoroughly rid of him.

He brings her along to their meet in the back of an abandoned warehouse in Battersea, introduces them with a courteous smile, and Feng, as ever, has Renaud figured out in a heartbeat. He’s hardly a complex man, and he spent the majority of their rather one-sided conversation directing his somewhat racist diatribe at her breasts. “Charming gentleman,” she comments once they’re out of earshot, making their way towards the chain-link fence marking the boundary of the warehouse’s forecourt, and Sebastian grins; he knows that she’s more than capable of handling his sort. He’s privately hoping she’ll castrate Renaud herself if she finds he’s ever a problem.

As they turn back towards the high street, Sebastian spots a grey-haired man in a long coat loitering inauspiciously by a black saloon. He starts as he sees the two of them turn the corner, and immediately crosses the road towards them; Sebastian’s lip curls, and he exchanges a dark glance with Feng, still and quiet by his side. He stinks of the Met, even from this distance, and there are few organisations in the world Sebastian holds in greater contempt.

The stranger draws eye-level and flashes his badge, eyeing Sebastian with obvious distaste. “Mind if I ask you a few questions?”

“Yes,” Sebastian replies abruptly, and makes to move away; the man dodges to block him, openly scowling.

“There’s something very shady going on in that warehouse back there,” he continues, squinting between the two of them and failing entirely to keep his tone conversational. Sebastian smiles thinly, ensures him he has absolutely no idea of any such business in the least, and pushes past him, continuing towards the high street at a casual pace, Feng wordlessly following suit. Though neither of them turns to look back, Sebastian’s sure the man is watching them go.

“I thought we had tabs on everyone in the Met?” she murmurs once they reach the road, chancing a quick glance back the way they came.

Sebastian has already circulated a brief description and what he remembers of his badge around their immediate associates, but there’s a vague, gnawing nervousness in the base of his gut, some premonition of trouble to come. “Not quite,” he replies, pocketing his phone and sending a final, furtive look up the otherwise-empty street as they turn for the row of shops further down the road. “Let me know if you see him again,” he adds, and Feng nods; she looks more irritated than concerned.

With the buffer of hindsight and a few hundred metres behind them, the formless sense of fear diminishes gradually in Sebastian’s mind. If Moriarty’s organisation were simple enough to be threatened by one dour, quixotic policeman it would have failed long before now; and even if he does become a persistent problem, as Sebastian first learnt some months ago, everyone has their ultimate price. He very much doubts this man will prove the exception.

 

 

 

 

They part ways at Clapham; Feng’s on the Tesco’s run. With no car waiting for him by the station, Sebastian catches a train through to Waterloo, heads home via Leicester Square to drop off a contract with one of their dealers posing as a ticket tout on Cranbourn Street. It’s already dark by the time he ducks down onto the Piccadilly line, and he’s grateful for the shelter; London has given up cold this Christmas and gone for wet instead, and the promise of rain has been hanging thickly above his head since he left the sanctuary of Waterloo station, an hour or so ago.

The house is dark and silent when he unlocks the door, but he’s smacked instantly by a thick, rotten stench, strong enough to make him gag. It’s impossible to go to war without knowing that smell. Heart suddenly rammed and thudding in his throat, Sebastian silently edges towards the kitchen, the adjacent door throwing a single slice of light into the corridor, his hands glued to the gun swiftly pulled from his pocket. Aside from his thin, tight breath, the air is utterly still around him; whatever’s happened, it’s long since over. 

After an unending age, he reaches the kitchen, nudges the door open with the tip of his foot, rushes through after it swiftly – there’s no answering shout, no movement made –

– but there is a dead man strapped to their dining-room table. ‘Man’ is generous; ‘man-shaped’ is closer, given that the majority of what made him human is strewn around him, smeared on the floor, the walls. There isn’t enough of his face left for Sebastian to recognise him. The stink is overpowering, and he swallows firmly down on the gag rising in his throat.

Jim is slumped in a chair on the opposite side of the room, unharmed but grimy with blood Sebastian assumes is not his own. Although Sebastian walks towards him carefully, makes sure his motions are noisy and deliberate, Jim still starts when he kneels down in front of him. “I’m putting a wash on,” he says, voice quiet and calm. “Do you want me to put those clothes in?”

Jim stares at Sebastian for a long, awful while; then nods once, rubs his eyes with fingers smeared and crusted with dried blood. Sebastian straightens up, busies himself with pulling sundries out of the cupboard, his movements perfectly calculated to be slow and predictable. He hears the soft sounds of Jim undressing; footsteps on the stairs; the shower turning on, and at this, he allows himself to clutch at the counter, let out a long, rough breath, his arms shaking, his heart still pounding a thick, steady roar. He gathers the clothes, shoves them into the machine, sets it going, and stares around the room, listening to the soft chuntering sounds of water and the steady drip-drip of fluid spilling over the table-edge. There are no signs of a break-in; no signs of a struggle. The man was strapped to the table, for fuck’s sake, and Jim, Jim had looked –

Blank.

No, not blank. Bare.

He scours his face with his hand, shakes his head. There’s no way he can ask. He could be an informer, he supposes, a spy or a traitor or just a scumbag, a nasty piece of work; Jim knows plenty of them.

Or he could be the postman. A leafleter on the streets. A random passer-by.

There’s procedure for occasions like this, and Sebastian pulls out his phone, dials a familiar number, gives a familiar set of orders; but he’d never thought he’d been doing this here, in their home, in an anonymous, ordinary, posh townhouse in Kensington. Brommer was working on a job in Notting Hill, and he’s there in fifteen minutes; he was a butcher before a ten-stretch in Belmarsh, and though quiet and reserved, he’s ruthlessly efficient. He turns up at Sebastian’s door with an armful of plastic tubs, and ten minutes later the corpse is gone.

“Take the table as well,” Sebastian says; even if he did get the stains out, he’d never be able to eat at it again. The floor he can scour with bleach; the walls are hopeless, but he’s always hated their weird shade of magnolia-beige anyway. He burns the cushion-covers from the chairs in the garden, puts the motley collection of things he can scrub at to soak in six inches of Dettol, and throws open the windows and doors, tries to shake the stench away with the softer smell of London rain.

He notices immediately when the fuzzy hum of the shower stops, makes coffee in a thin excuse to climb the stairs to Jim’s room. He finds Jim window-watching, sat cross-legged on his bed; there’s no sign of his laptop, no sign of his phone. He’d like to say he looks shaken, but truthfully there’s nothing but emptiness in his eyes.

He hands Jim the mug wordlessly, floating uselessly in the middle of the floor. He’s failed to hold Jim’s attention before, when he’s distracted by a job or, more often, when Sebastian is simply boring him; but never like this, never this blank indifference. He wants to ask – no, he wants to tell, that it doesn’t bother him, that he’s sorted everything downstairs, but knows Jim will think him simple – sentimental – if he does. He knows Jim will know all of this already.

Sebastian wants to know why, but not to understand. Sebastian wants to know why so he can rip out someone’s lungs.

 

 

 

Neither of them sleeps. Sebastian pretends to, and soon discovers sitting insomnia-clad in their gutted kitchen is only slightly less frustrating than lying sleeplessly in bed, listening to Jim unmistakeably awake in the room next door. The détente ends at six with the unmistakeable slam of the front door; Sebastian leaves the refuge of his room, finds himself wandering down the landing to stare blankly at the place where Jim had sat the night before, a mere foot away but somehow entirely beyond his reach.

Sebastian spends most of his day on the tail of an insubordinate antiques smuggler on the run from Moriarty’s ranks, only to eventually find the man dead in a ditch the other side of Hampstead; though this was indeed the intended final result, there was some rather valuable information on an equally valuable Lefaucheux Sebastian had first intended to acquire from him. When he finally turns his hands to other matters, not only do a further three of his informants turn up in the Thames, but he’s subsequently trapped in a somewhat hysterical phonecall from one of Jim’s more blue-blooded clients, exhibiting a world-class performance of paranoia it takes him a good two hours to coax her down from.

He’s sore and sweaty and tired by the time the car crawls through Kensington, and with truly impeccable timing, the bulb in the kitchen then blows in spectacular fashion. He spends a moment hopefully entertaining the notion that Moriarty might have hidden some spares somewhere, before deciding that Jim probably wouldn’t know a lightbulb if it bit him on the arse and resigning himself to a slow trudge up to the Tesco’s at the end of their road.

Sebastian’s balanced on a chair in the middle of the floor when Moriarty comes home, looking no worse for wear despite the thick rain slamming against the windows. He pauses in the doorway, staring up at Sebastian with the smallest of frowns on his face. “I pay people to do that sort of thing.”

Sebastian glances over at him. He looks – normal, with a mannered air of boredom, his keys twitching restlessly between his fingertips. He’s seen Jim play a thousand roles to a thousand men and women across London; he likes to think he’d know if he were acting. “You’re paying me,” Sebastian counters, turning the final screw and climbing down. “Dinner?”

Jim flicks on the light, shakes his head. “Don’t be long,” he says as he turns to leave the room. “I want you to kill someone tonight.”

Sebastian can feel his exhaustion in his bones; he thinks, though only briefly, of telling Jim to go fuck himself, before resigning himself to a long night on a wet rooftop. Jim needs it done.

 

 

 

When he finally makes it home, a little after three a.m., he sleeps like the dead til the following afternoon. Moriarty is conspicuously absent when he wakes, no mention of Sebastian’s handiwork from the night before, but he can’t honestly say he was expecting any compliments. Moriarty takes after both Augustus Moran and Oxford with uncanny accuracy; praise is rarely given, but there’s no end of extremely vocal rage should he fail.

As first order of the day, he meets Feng in a sprawling Pret off Covent Garden. He finds her looking uncomfortably guilty, her shoulders squared but her eyes skittish and wary; “before you ask,” she says as he sits down, overpriced coffee in hand, “I didn’t fuck that up, but one of my guys did. Needless to say, he’s scrubbing proverbial toilets for the foreseeable future.”

Sebastian allows himself a small smile. Much to his surprise, his target of the previous evening had come accompanied by a ward number for Charing Cross Hospital; intensive care, it had turned out. Private room. He’d put on a pair of thick, black-framed glasses and a whiny Australian accent, convinced the nurse on duty he was a long-lost cousin on a stopover from the States, in town for one night only.

(“He’s really very lucky, you know,” she told him as she unlocked the door, flashing him a small, uncertain smile under wide brown eyes; he’d hoped he didn’t have to kill her, too. “Just a little further to the left and it’d have gone right through his heart.”)

Sebastian shrugs. “No harm done,” he replies; she sends him a flat look, sensing that he’s taking the piss, but he notices the outward relief, the way her shoulders slump. “How’ve you got on?”

“Did Shafik, Renaud, Andrews, Burnstein, Kwiatkowska.” She grins. “Left Calahan for you, though.”

He raises an eyebrow. “How kind,” he murmurs dryly. “Did Shafik push you over one-eighty?”

Her grin widens. “He tried,” she replies, sugar sweet, and Sebastian bites back a smile.

They part ways once they leave the café; each has business at opposite ends of the city. He heads towards Piccadilly alone, accidentally stumbling into the middle of a première for some godawful rom-com in Leicester Square and thus heading south towards Charing Cross instead, wrestling past the irregular lumps of tourists clogging the pavement with a thick scowl. His route takes him past the pub he’d shared a drink with Cathy in, months ago; he finds himself faltering in front of it, buffeted by annoyed pedestrians as he comes to a halt in the middle of the crowd. He finds himself wondering whether she passed the tests she’d been worrying about, whether she’s flown out to Afghanistan. He doesn’t think he ever asked.

He’s jolted roughly by a group of schoolkids, rushing past him in a frenzied group to catch their bus; he bites back the urge to snap at them, rubs slowly at his eyes. He knows, truthfully, that what he misses is the idea of Cathy, and not Cathy herself; to have someone with whom he can hold a conversation not inevitably concerning last time he shot someone in the head. The last time they’d spoken, he’d considered her worth nothing more than his contempt, and he hasn’t spared her a moment’s thought since. She, like Daisy, like his mother, had been cast aside because he’d wanted nothing else but than to leave them behind; and all nostalgia aside, he’d give anything at all not to go back to that tepid, incessant life.

 

 

 

Anthony Calahan is a fat, quiet little man, with pleasant enough manners but a crippling case of body odour, which, in combination with greying, wispy hair and a tendency towards awkwardness has made him a recluse at almost thirty-five. He is, however, amongst the finest forgers of Merovingian art Sebastian’s ever met, and consequently one of Moriarty’s most employed artists. He does have a rather morbid sense of humour; their first meeting had taken place in a graveyard, along with the three after. They’ve since progressed to inside the church attached to aforementioned crematorium, though Sebastian isn’t sure whether that’s simply because of the heavy rain that only British weather can provide.

The air inside the church, although freezing, is close, and dank with the thick smell of wet stone; it settles around him the moment he steps through the high, creaking door. It brings with it a thousand childhood memories, cold fingers on Sunday mornings, mouthing along to hymns, trying not to yawn through the sermon, staring longingly at the expensive chocolate on the Traidcraft stand.

Today, there are no hymns or sermons for him to ignore; the church is almost empty, save for the few inexorable elderly men and women hanging around its sides, the quiet business of the clergy behind the scenes. He takes a seat on a creaking wooden pew, stares absently up at the morose face of Jesus which looms above the pulpit. The plight of Christ has inspired thousands of beautiful artworks all across the Christian world, but the concrete figure squatting above the pulpit is definitely not one of them; Sebastian wonders whether Calahan chose this particular church for that alone, so that he might, when feeling miserable, be cheered up by the fact that whatever he produced would always be better than this.

He’s snapped back to the present by the quiet creak of a stranger settling into the pew behind him; in a vast, empty church, Sebastian doesn’t believe in coincidence, and he turns to eye him warily. He’s thin, verging on skinny, with a flopping mass of black hair and a huge pair of bright blue, horn-rimmed glasses perched on his nose. Sebastian definitely doesn’t know him. He does his best to ignore him, his eye on the vestry door, his fingertips tapping out an irregular rhythm on his knee; but he’s interrupted once again by the loud shriek of old wood as the stranger leans forward on the sagging bench, and says, “I haven’t seen you here before.”

Sebastian shoots him a thin smile. “I’m not what you’d call a regular.”

The stranger’s lips quirk, amused, and he holds out his hand, his thin wrists balancing on the back of Sebastian’s pew. “Nathaniel Peterson,” he offers, and though Sebastian takes his hand, he makes no reply; Nathaniel’s smile grows wider. “You’re very Laconic, aren’t you?”

Sebastian throws him a look. “I suppose.” He notes the way Nathaniel’s eyes snap down to his mouth as he talks, drag their way back up to his eyes quite blatantly.

“I came over because I was wondering if you and I might go for a drink,” Nathaniel continues, tone blithe but eyes sharp and laughing. “In the Alan Bennett, euphemistic sense of the word, obviously.”

“Obviously,” Sebastian echoes, stalling for time, trying not to stare. His first thought is whether Jim would let him; his second is why Jim Moriarty should have any say in who he spends his time with, so long as he gets his job done. Across the cavernous hall, the vestry door peeks open slightly; his cue from Calahan. He stands, runs his hand through his hair. “Excuse me,” he adds, and with a thin smile shuffles out into the aisle.

He makes it five steps or so before he pauses, turns, and paces back. He finds a scrap of paper in his pockets, pens down his number, hands it over, and Nathaniel grins at him slyly. “ _Lovely_ meeting you,” he says as he takes it, and Sebastian rolls his eyes, resisting the urge to flip him off. He deliberately doesn’t look back as he heads once again for the vestry door.

Calahan’s paranoia is worsening; there’s no-one waiting for him the other side of the door, and Sebastian paces along the stone corridor behind it alone, trying to ignore the way the cold air on the back of his neck makes his hackles rise. There’s a second, more modern-looking door at its end, and he knocks on this once, wonders if he’s supposed to have learnt some special code. For a long, uncomfortable moment he’s forced to loiter awkwardly in the corridor beyond, and then, finally, the door opens, and he’s allowed to step inside.

The room is small, perfectly neat, and smells slightly of root vegetables. It’s occupied mostly by a series of wobbly bookshelves, laden with various arts supplies and a motley selection of artworks which, from this distance, Sebastian can’t tell whether original or otherwise. Calahan is standing a little to one side, fidgeting nervously, which comes as no shock at all to Sebastian. “Payment first?” he asks, and Calahan nods jerkily. Sebastian bites back a sigh, pulls out a roll of cash from his jacket pocket, and places it on the bench to his right. Calahan eyes it nervously for a moment, then shuffles across the room to retrieve a nondescript black box from the back of the lowest shelf; he sidles over to Sebastian and hands it to him, eyes firmly on the floor. Sebastian decides not to pop the lid; Calahan isn’t idiotic enough to try and fleece them. He grants him a gracious smile and walks back into the cold corridor alone, slipping it into the pocket of his overcoat as he does.

The church is empty when he re-enters it through the vestry door, and he stands for a minute in the wide, cold aisle, listens to the clattering of the rain on the faraway roof above him; then he heads for the door, flicks up his collar against the wind, his mind a careful, crafted blank.

 

 

 

His drink with Nathaniel ends up not being euphemistic in the slightest; the choice of a Thursday night means the pub is quiet and calm, and they sit there until last orders talking about something and nothing in a way Sebastian hasn’t done for longer than he cares to remember. Nathaniel teaches geography, which is only a touch different from the accountant Sebastian had guessed. He’s not bright, but he’s funny, and nice, if childish. Most importantly, neither is in the employ of the other, and with that alone Sebastian feels as if the world has been lifted from his shoulders whenever he speaks to him.

Nathaniel fidgets incessantly as they wait by his bus stop, tripping his fingers over one another, rocking backwards and forwards on his heels; to his credit, Sebastian does try to find it endearing. He insists, shyly, on kissing Sebastian on the cheek as the bus pulls up, and it takes a considerable amount of Sebastian’s self-control not to drag him into the nearest alleyway. “Maybe see you at the weekend?” he asks as the doors open, unashamedly hopeful as he stares up at him, his face impossibly open. Sebastian gives a half-hearted reply, aware of how rare it is for him to have more than one night clear in a week; but finds himself wanting to, hoping to.

Sebastian turns away towards the station, still wearing a smile – and a deep, overwhelming, boiling rage erupts violently in the base of his gut as he spots a familiar jet-black car, loitering purposefully a dozen yards or so down the road. Sebastian stumbles to a halt in the middle of the street; a passer-by slams into his shoulder, mutters a half-arsed apology as he staggers on past, but Sebastian’s choked silent by his own fury. He’s stood there scouring back through their night in the pub, frantically recalling the faces of those sat near them, and this is almost what angers him most; that Jim has destroyed his very memory of the evening, of _his_ evening, time spent on a life outside of Jim now stained inexorably with his name. Jim could not bear to allow him one single thing that was his.

He’s still licked with rage when he reaches their home, slamming his way noisily into the hall and itching for a fight – but it drains from him almost instantly at the sight of Jim, sat in front of their television, glazed and absent in a way that sets his teeth on edge. The dullness of his expression has been uncomfortably prevalent of late.

Sebastian leans against the doorway, watches him in silence, robbed of anything to say. He looks exhausted. He’s taken off his jacket, rolled up his sleeves, and his hair’s a tangled scruff; it’s the least polished he’s ever seen him. He’d been dressed impeccably even when he was smothered with another man’s guts.

The volume flares momentarily; the advert break begins. Moriarty reaches over to mute the television, runs his hand through his hair. “I had you followed,” Jim says, quietly; he still doesn’t look his way.

Sebastian nods once. “I know.” He wonders if Jim expected him to be angry, to start a fight, for anything other than this limp indifference to sit chokingly in the air. He bites the inside of his mouth; he almost wishes he has the energy to kick off, if it would help, but he can’t feel anything but exhausted, a coldness digging deep down in his bones. “You should get some sleep,” he says, but Jim stares glassily at the screen, his programme resumed; he bites back a sigh, turns to climb the stairs. Sebastian showers, changes, loiters on the landing and listens to the soft, tinny laughs from the television down below, before giving up, heading to bed himself.

 

 

 

Decades pass before he sleeps, and when it comes he’s restless. He jolts awake at two a.m. with his heart in his throat, choking on a shout; he’d dreamt of fear, of the dry rocks of Afghanistan, of Jim’s body on a rooftop, thick, red blood pooling round his head. It’s definitely getting worse. He sits up, kneads his eye with one hand and tugs his alarm clock round with the other, sweat still cooling on his temples. Barely past two, but his skin still feels like it’s crawling, itching and queasy; he doesn’t think he’ll sleep again.

Sebastian goes to climb from the bed; but he’s frozen instantly at the sight of Jim’s silhouette in the doorway, his face thrown into shadow and unreadable in the light pouring in from the corridor behind him. He stares at Jim, breath still skittish, restless, and though he can’t see him clearly, he’s certain Jim’s staring back. Then, in a single burst of catlike movement, Jim’s across the room, dropping down hard on Sebastian’s chest, and a wall of lurching, screaming panic slams into him, rips through every sinew and vein – he’s caught up mindlessly in the image of Jim, gore-smeared and wild-eyed, straddling the stranger on their dining room table, the knife in his hand –

Sebastian’s reflexes are rusty, but he’s flipped the two of them before he takes another breath, hears the hot hiss of Jim’s gasp in a flicker by his ear as his body spins past, pinned down against the mattress. Sebastian calmly, deliberately slows his breathing, clenches and unclenches his fingers against the sharp, fragile bones of Jim’s wrists. When he forces himself to look down, Jim’s eyes are black and wide in the half-light; but he doesn’t look wrathful, cold. His palms, pinned to either side, face up towards Sebastian; empty. If anything, he looks –

– scared.

Jim’s panting a little, his breath coming in short, tiny wheezes; Sebastian warily slides a little further back, tentatively allows him to pull in a full breath, and – _oh_. Comprehension dawns – his eyes fly wide – he lets go of Moriarty’s hands – and Jim drags him down and kisses him, all teeth and tongue.

Instant, vicious heat scrapes through him at the touch, leaves him gasping, and his hand finds Jim’s hair, wrenching him close to kiss him back. He claws his nails down Jim’s arms, rests his other palm on Jim’s hipbones, digs his fingers in; Jim cants his hips, a quick, calculated move that speaks of experience Sebastian hadn’t expected, and undirected jealously unfurls hot, low anger in his gut, his skin itching, his blood hot and raw.

Sebastian jerks back for breath, bites a hot, wet line along Jim’s jaw, down towards the crux of his neck; he feels Jim shiver, and he has to close his eyes, clench his fingers hard. He hadn’t hoped, he hadn’t expected, he hadn’t thought – but he wants, far more than he realised. _Christ_ , does he want, already dizzy and struggling to breathe with the strength of it. Jim’s fingers are tangled in the hair at the nape of Sebastian’s neck, cruelly tight, and he uses them to drag Sebastian up again; this time Sebastian lets him, half-pushes his way there instead. He enjoys the novelty of Jim panting wetly against his mouth the moment he pulls back, mouth slack and eyes wide, his breath thick and affected, face open and utterly wrecked.

He settles in the haphazard sprawl of Jim’s thighs, stretched obscenely by Sebastian lying between them, and even through the steady roar of blood in his ears he doesn’t miss the ragged noise Jim makes when their hips align, nor the furious flush that breaks across his neck when he realises what he’s done. Sebastian grants him a smile, wide and cruel, and mouths along his jawline, keeps them deliberately an inch apart, uses his weight to stop Jim from  –

– Jim turns his head, sinks his teeth into Sebastian’s throat, and sharp, brutal pain rips through Sebastian’s body, vicious and intense. He’s moved before he’s fully realised, jerked upright and slid back forward across Jim’s chest, crushing the breath from him in a single, cruel movement; Jim bucks up, tries to snarl, but it comes out as a pathetic half-wheeze instead. Sebastian ignores him, traps Jim’s hands against his chest, and sucks in deep, even breaths, feels the haze retreat a little from the backs of his eyes. He touches his neck with his free hand, feels blood on his fingertips; Jim smiles, feral, and in the half-light he can see blood smudged on sharp white teeth.

“Do you not want me fighting?” Jim murmurs, his tone sugar-sweet. “I can only struggle a little, if you’d like. I can even be _pliant_.”

The tenseness falls swiftly from Jim’s muscles; he flutters his eyelashes, assumes an expression Sebastian can only describe as coy, and Sebastian feels a hot, hard anger unfurl in his chest. “ _Stop it_.” He tightens his hold around Jim’s wrists, hard enough to hurt, and sees for a moment that familiar snarl resume, the quiet cracking of his composure. He doesn’t want some thin pretence, Richard or Michael or Trevor or Johnson or whomever Jim has decided he wants to be. He wants –

He climbs off Jim wordlessly, staggers through to the bathroom on autopilot, locks the door. The sharp halogen bulb is unforgiving to the ragged cut on his neck; it looks ugly even once he’s cleaned it, the skin around already thick and purpling. He stares blankly back at his own reflection, resists the urge to throw a punch.

He hears the creak of his bedroom door; soft footsteps in the hall; Jim’s door sliding shut. He sits down on the cold tiled floor, curls up against the wall, and stays there, waiting for the blood to settle in his veins.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The aforementioned warning for dubcon applies to a scene in this chapter (as mentioned, both parties are consensual, but this is not fully discussed beforehand). To avoid it, please skip the scene beginning "he rides a bus home from Hammersmith at eight in the morning" and resume at "Nathaniel is happy to oblige".

Sebastian sees nothing of Jim for three days. On the fourth, he staggers back from calming Omovich down at two a.m. to find Jim sat at the kitchen table; working, he assumes, but doesn’t care enough to check. Sebastian says nothing of his nausea-edged hunger, of the tiredness that’s beginning to resettle in his bones, of the awkward, half-aching knot in his gut that manifested minutes after the last time they were together and had refused to shift ever since; he makes tea, sets a mug before Jim unprompted, and gulps his own down in scalding mouthfuls on the stairs up to bed.

It’s three days more before he finds Nathaniel’s text, sat unobtrusively on his phone and asking to share a meal he’s not sure he even had. He rings him when he has five minutes to hand to apologise; Nathaniel is, of course, the perfect gentleman. He says he’s working late; Nathaniel says he knows a place, his voice tinted with a warm half-smile, and Sebastian finds himself stepping off a bus onto the Kings Road at five to ten to kill two birds with one stone.

He picks up something undoubtedly tailor-made and expensive from the incongruous Westwood between the Oxfam and tackily-fronted furniture store, before heading east to Nathaniel and the overpriced pancakes he’d had him order ahead. Nathaniel smiles as he comes through the door, a bright, warm, sunny thing, unfamiliar and welcome. “You’re picking up his clothes now?” he says as he spots the bag, smile warping into a grin. “You always made your job sound far more glamorous than that.” 

Sebastian slants him a look that tells him, quite firmly, to piss off, and drags the menu towards him. “That looks like it hurt.” 

Sebastian looks up to find Nathaniel’s eyes fixed on the bruise at his throat; he rubs at it absently, throws him a wry smile. “Got in a fight,” he answers vaguely, and if anything it’s at least a half-truth. He tries hard not to think of the wide shock of Jim’s eyes, the way his chest had felt under his thighs; it’s a practiced routine.

Nathaniel keeps him entertained with a mostly one-sided rant on the intrigues of the staffroom of his south London comprehensive, and Sebastian eats more food in a single sitting than he has in a week and a half. They get thrown out at half-ten, full to the point of nausea and Sebastian unable to shake a lopsided grin; on some sense of decency, Nathaniel waits until they’ve rounded a corner into some nondescript, depopulated street before hustling him up against the wall to kiss him. He curves his mouth around the ragged bite mark on Sebastian’s throat, murmurs “please say yes,” and Sebastian can’t think of a single reason why not.

His phone splutters indignantly at him as they pile into the back of a black cab; he does the unthinkable and turns it off. Moriarty’s world, he decides, quite firmly, can fucking wait.

 

 

 

He’s still awake at five when he gets the call from Jim. Nathaniel decidedly isn’t, starfished across the bed and wheezing faintly with every breath; even on this little sleep Sebastian hadn’t managed to get comfortable. He’d dressed enough to leave Nathaniel’s room and come stand on the balcony of his cheap council estate, press his palms into the cold rail, push his shoulders out into the cold January air. His skin itches for a cigarette in a way it hasn’t in years, in a way he’d thought he was long since past.

He hadn’t even realised his phone was on until it’d started to buzz; he pulls it out, considers lobbing it as far as he can fucking throw until he notices who’s calling. “You alright?”

 _“Fine.”_ Moriarty’s end of the line is unhelpful, devoid of any hints as to his whereabouts; Sebastian pinches the bridge of his nose, tries to clear a few of the cobwebs from his mind. He could be at home, Sebastian realises as the silence stretches down the phone. He could have gone into his room and seen the empty bed and known.

A low, unnameable fear curls coolly around the base of Sebastian’s spine. “Jim,” he says, and the line goes dead. He stares down at the phone in his hand, a useless, black, plastic lump, and he thinks, viciously, of throwing it into the wall, over the balcony, calling him back – but he does nothing, stands there, waits, watches the grey, miserable sun heave its way above the horizon, throw the first insipid, thin light into the new day.

 

 

He rides a bus home from Hammersmith at eight in the morning, accompanied by a crowd of baying schoolkids who alight like a tidal wave the stop before Sebastian’s. The house is empty when he lets himself in; Sebastian makes himself tea, settles opposite Jim’s place on the kitchen table. He has a thousand and one things to do, but suddenly none of them seems achievable in the absence of Jim, the open space alien in front of him, the room somehow simultaneously both stiflingly small and impossibly vast.

He’d been certain Jim would be back by late morning; lunch; afternoon; dinner; and when he finally does reappear, long after midnight, Sebastian had ceased doing anything meaningful hours before, had been staring vacantly at the empty chair with his fingers in fists and his mind a careful, furious blank. The click of the latch sends such strong relief cleaving through him he can taste it; but it’s licked with an itchy, hard anger, directed as much at Jim (for reacting like a child; for having left without a word) as himself (for fussing at all). He hasn’t properly eaten or slept in days, hasn’t killed in a month; if Jim decides to fight him, Sebastian will not stop himself. And Jim will not win.

He thinks Jim must sense this when he enters the room; he drops his keys on the kitchen counter, hovers in the doorway, his keen eyes on Sebastian, whose ragged, unkempt nails are biting soft crescents into his palms. Jim’s expression is attempting to be neutral, but Sebastian knows him far too well for that, can read litanies from the line of his shoulders, low, angled, hunched, the set of his jaw, pulled taut against a scruff of unshaven skin.

He throws Sebastian a look of feigned, mild indifference, turns to leave again, and Sebastian is overcome by the urge to stop him, gripped by a mix of choking rage and heady fear even at the thought of his departure. He finds himself across the room before he’s realised he’s moved at all, his fingers caught around Jim’s wrist, white-hot, brandingly tight. Jim’s staring down at the point where their skin meets; though it’d been unintentional, Sebastian can now feel how the steady thrum of his pulse is faster, can hear the slight, soft catch of breath in Jim’s chest, the dry click of his throat. Jim’s eyes slide up back towards his, and the smile curled around his mouth is deliberate and sly. _Go on_ , it says; as if Sebastian is a child, as if Jim expects him to believe for a half a heartbeat he’s nothing but entertained by all this. It floods Sebastian with a vicious, cruel rage. The smile morphs into something feral as Sebastian twists Jim’s wrist, uses his weight to slam Jim up against the wall, face pressed against the fading paintwork and bucking back against Sebastian’s chest. He wonders whether Jim realises he’s inches from the still-present, fading bloodstain of their last houseguest, veiled under a thin layer of the refreshed magnolia paint.

Jim has gone knowingly pliant against the wall, and Sebastian rests his forehead on Jim’s shoulder, takes the opportunity of his clear advantage to think. Jim would have him think that this is all beneath him, that it is for Sebastian’s pleasure alone; but he can feel the unsteady tension in the taut snap of his shoulders, hear the rasping catch of Jim’s breath. Jim has entirely underestimated how well Sebastian has come to know him. With one hand still on Jim’s wrist and the other fixed on Jim’s hip, Sebastian swings the two of them in a neat arc, has Jim stumbling into the side of the table, off-balance; Sebastian uses his height and weight and decades in the armed forces to overpower him even from this awkward angle, kick his legs apart and pin him against the table’s edge. Jim scrabbles a little at the tabletop, bucks back against him with a soft snarl; but when Sebastian finds bare skin at the nape of his neck and sinks his teeth in, the noise he rips from Jim is unmistakeably a moan.

He wishes desperately he could see Jim’s face, but when he pulls back, mouths wetly at the red, angry mark his teeth have left, Jim lets out something of a strangled grunt, and from this alone Sebastian can guess his expression; mouth slack; eyes blown; teeth bearing down against his bottom lip to catch any further sounds. Sebastian smiles at the back of Jim’s head, and even to him it feels wide and cruel. He skates his fingers to the base of Jim’s chest, dips them slightly under Jim’s waistband, and at this proximity Jim cannot conceal the soft shiver that runs down his back as he flicks open Jim’s belt, pushes the zip of Jim’s trousers down. Then he has Jim in hand, hot and hard and so obviously wanting, and it’s not so much that Sebastian has Jim pinned, though Sebastian would be lying if he said that this in itself didn’t curl something primal round the base of his gut; if he truly tried to escape, Sebastian would let him. But here, pressed back against Sebastian’s chest and unmistakeably shaking, Jim has absolutely nowhere to hide, no handy façade he can crawl behind. Sebastian can feel every flutter of his pulse, every half-swallowed breath, can taste the thin sweat gathering at the nape of his neck. And Jim _knows_ this.

Sebastian finally catches sight of Jim’s reflection, mirrored back to him in the black slab of the room’s French window. He looks gorgeous, thick-lipped and ransacked, and Sebastian wants to rip him apart.

There is nothing left of Jim’s composure. He’s something close to shocked, almost panicked; his mouth stays slack, his eyes wide, his head tipped back to rest against Sebastian’s shoulder as he breathes thickly, his hips punching up to meet Sebastian’s hand, erratic, frantic. He pushes, grinds back against Sebastian in irregular, half-aborted motions Sebastian is certain he doesn’t even know he’s making, and Sebastian has to suck in a breath, bite down again on Jim’s neck, heat crackling across his shoulders, down his back, curling at the base of his spine. If he weren’t so afraid of spooking Jim, of snapping whatever spell he’s placed on him even for a moment, he’d follow through on how much he wants to fuck him. He hears Jim swallow back another sound, but the edges of it still lick at his catching breath, and Sebastian thinks mindlessly of spreading Jim further, one hand at his hip, teeth in the soft flesh of Jim’s shoulder, fucking him until he’s helpless with it, sweat-soaked and gasping, immaculate nails splintering as he scrambles for purchase on the tabletop.

He wonders whether he could make Jim beg.

Jim shivers, snapping Sebastian back to the here-and-now, a motion that starts out small, ripples through his shoulders and spreads; by the time it reaches Jim’s hands, one braced against the tabletop and the other somehow having found its way to Sebastian’s hair, his eyes are closed and his mouth is gasping, open. Sebastian gets no further warning: Jim’s hips snap up once more; his mouth forms soundlessly around gibberish, half-formed words, then a short, high-pitched, gasped _fuck_ ; and Jim comes in his hand, blind and scrabbling.

Sebastian eases back, lets Jim go, and he slumps against the table, his legs still trembling. Jim turns to lean against the table’s edge, and raw shock lingers on his face for a heartbeat, maybe two; then anger overtakes it, lips curled back in a snarl, and Sebastian jerks back, startled and overcautious. Jim pushes past him in silence, doesn’t afford him so much as another glance.

Sebastian leans back against the nearest wall, his breath fast and thick inside his chest, listens to the sound of Jim’s footsteps on the stairs, the shower turning on. He stares at the table before him, squat and incongruous in the middle of the room; restless lust is still thumping round his bloodstream. Fucking _hell._

Jim thuds back downstairs minutes later, dressed in what Sebastian assumes was the contents of the Westwood bag he’d dropped it on Jim’s bed that morning; he comes into the kitchen wearing a thick half-scowl, still trying to fix his cufflinks. Sebastian tries to pretend his mouth doesn’t run dry at the view the suit affords, that he isn’t still half-hard and fuck-flushed. “I’m not in,” Jim throws at him carelessly, and stalks from the room.

Sebastian scours his face with his hand, pushes the image firmly from his mind just as the front door slams shut. He needs a fucking drink.

 

 

 

Nathaniel is happy to oblige. Friday night had found him drinking with friends in a pub off Wilton Road, and Sebastian decides definitely to go to him, rather than any reverse; they meet outside the station, and Sebastian doesn’t wait before hustling him up against the nearest wall, lust and rage still slamming through his system. “Fuck _me_ ,” Nathaniel murmurs against his mouth with a grin, and he’s half-mentioned a bus route back to Hammersmith at the end of the road before Sebastian cuts him off, shakes his head; there must be somewhere nearby they could –

He looks up, swallows a hysterical laugh. The hunkering form of the Grosvenor is crouched above them, and though Sebastian is somewhat dubious about God, there’s evidently some sense of poetic justice in the world. Nathaniel follows his eye, looks back at him in disbelief. “Tell me you’re joking.”

Sebastian leans in to kiss him again, hot and rough – _too bony, too tall, skin too coarse_ – and grins. “Bet you I can get us a room.”

Having Jim’s pseudonym to drop on the door has its benefits, and they are shepherded up to an overly-smart room with the utmost politeness, in spite of their dishevelled dress and haphazard manners. The bellhop is barely out of the room before he has Nathaniel up against the door, biting hard on his neck, threading his fingers carelessly through his hair. Nathaniel instantly sinks to his knees, but Sebastian insists on undressing him, insists on Nathaniel fucking him on the bed; but his mind’s taken up with Jim, eyes closed, fingers digging into his hipbones, _too bony, too tall, the angle wrong_ , and though when he comes it knocks the breath clean out of him, he’s left feeling itchy, angry, unsettled, raw.

Nathaniel slumps on the bed beside him when they’re done, and Sebastian recognises a look on his face he’d seen on Daisy’s, months before. “There’s something you’re not telling me,” he says quietly; Sebastian has to fight against the urge to laugh, wondering where, if pushed, he would even start. He leans in and kisses Nathaniel slowly, kicks off the remains of the coverlet and pads towards the bathroom to grab a glass of water, clean himself up. By the time he re-enters the room, Nathaniel is partly-dressed and halfway to the door, buttoning up what remains of his shirt.

Sebastian leans against the doorframe and watches him finish in silence. “I thought you might try and convince me to stay,” Nathaniel says, his tone deliberately light. Sebastian says nothing. Nathaniel finishes dressing, gives Sebastian a tired look; he pauses when he reaches the door, but shakes his head, leaves without another word.

Sebastian returns to the bed, smoothes down a patch of the crumpled bedclothes, drops down onto them and stares out of the window, his mind entirely blank. The bedside clock informs him it’s barely after ten, but the idea of the journey back to that empty, silent house is unappealing; and they already have – he has – the room for the night. He strips back the dirty sheets, wraps himself in a clean spare, and lies back, looks up at the white rectangle of the ceiling, embossed with a thousand nonsensical, looping patterns. He’s trying very fucking hard not to think, but even now he cannot shake away the sight of the raw shock in Jim’s eyes, the feeling of blind fury in his veins as he heard the front door slam shut.

 

 

 

Sebastian sleeps thinly, restlessly, drops in and out of dreams and wakes up after moments, panic wrapped thick and tight around his chest but with no memory as to why. There’s a hazy, scattering, intangible something crawling down his spine as he sits alone in the dark, drenched with sweat; even as he tugs in deep, ragged breaths, tries to pull back his mind to some kind of clarity, he feels loose, unsettled, raw, as if he’s grabbing vainly at fistfuls of smoke each and every time he wakes.

Dawn easily throws its thin light through the window, past the undrawn curtains; and Sebastian, thrown from sleep from the fifth and final time, throat raw and sweat cooling, gives up on the night altogether. His clothes lie crumpled and abandoned on the floor, and, try as he might, he can’t resurrect them to anything approaching acceptable before facing the thin-lipped receptionist to settle the bill. She grants him one glance before deciding she’s seen his type before, and he is handed back his credit card alongside a thin, ersatz smile.

There is little competition for a cab on the wide, empty road, and Sebastian flags one down with ease, settles back in the creaking seat and shuts his eyes, trying in vain to chase a final flicker of rest between here and his doubtless unforgiving reception in Kensington. The driver easily picks her way through the early morning traffic, and the shops on the high street are barely peeking shutter as the cab turns to pull onto the corner of Abingdon Road. Soft voices greet him as he enters the hall, rather than the silence he’d expected; Feng’s he recognises, but there’s a second, deeper, unfamiliar, and he strains to catch their words as he closes the door.

Sebastian drops his keys on the side, and is met instantly and inescapably by a grimy handprint on the wall above, the muddy, dark brown of dried blood. He presses his fingers to it briefly; it’s smaller than his, with long, slim fingers – Feng’s, at a guess. Gripped suddenly by not a little fear, Sebastian walks quickly to the kitchen, throws Feng and her unknown guest instantly into silence – but she’s fine, he thinks, looking her over swiftly, catching the hard clench of her jaw and the soft bruise of insomnia hanging under her eyes. Nothing more, nothing to cause the smeared mess in the hallway – unless –

Unless the blood isn’t _hers_ –

“Seb,” she says instantly, hand thrown lightning-fast to find his wrist, her fingers clenched so tightly he can hear the bones creak beneath the skin. “He’s fine, Seb, he’s sleeping, he’s alright, he’s _fine_.” She’s more than strong enough to throw him to the ground, even with this bright, restless terror slamming through his system; but he’s tempted to throw her off nonetheless, make a bolt for the stairs, fight his way to –

He sucks in a steady breath, pulls back his captured hand; warily, Feng lets it go. The stranger is no stranger at all; Fujita, he now realises, a tall, sharp-eyed man with steady hands, a steadier nerve, and twenty years’ experience on a major trauma ward. Most importantly, he owes a very great deal to Jim Moriarty – or certainly enough to be certain of his discretion, should his services ever be required. Fujita takes his scrutiny as his cue to leave, and nods briefly in Feng’s direction. “Don’t move him until the transfusion finishes,” Fujita says, regarding Sebastian with obvious distaste and fetching a holdall from where it rests on the kitchen table. “I’ll need to see him again by the end of the week.”

Feng sees him to the door, and Sebastian immediately takes the opportunity to ascend the stairs, legs shaking and heart lurching painfully in his chest. The way to Jim’s bedroom is lined by a messy trail of grubby handprints and spoiled bandages, and by the time Sebastian reaches the end of the hallway, he’s immeasurably afraid to enter, to confront what he might find. There’s a heartbeat’s hesitation as he presses arched fingers to the cold white wood, shoves open the door and forces himself to step inside –

Jim, unconscious, motionless and sheet-white, lies propped up in bed with his arm bound against his chest, and Sebastian almost cannot bring himself to look away for fear that he might vanish. “It’s a flesh wound,” Feng says, now hovering in the open doorway behind him. “In his shoulder. Nothing worse, I swear.”

She flinches when he glances back at her; he imagines his fear and anger have made his expression dark and cruel.  “Renaud,” she continues by way of explanation, her voice tight and quiet. “I was en route to meet his shipment, when.” She gestures towards Jim, immobile on the bed; there’s still some dried blood on her fingers, and it flitters off in flakes when she moves. “I thought it was strange, but. Renaud looked ready to shit himself when he saw us. Him with me. Then when the Met showed up Renaud panicked, assumed we were in on it – ”

Sebastian knows the rest. “Renaud?”

She shrugs carelessly. “Last I saw he was down.” An awful pause; then, quietly, like softly splintering glass, she adds, “he said your name.”

The floor beside them is scattered with the debris of Fujita’s work, but Jim’s bandages are crisp and clean; he traces his fingers down the slope of Jim’s shoulder, rests them lightly in the centre, where he thinks the wound must be. Jim doesn’t stir. “Sir,” Feng says, and Sebastian turns round, looks at Feng with mild surprise; she’s never called him sir before.

“Get some rest,” he says, a vague attempt to offer her what kindness he can manage. “I’ll stay with him.”

He waits a moment to watch her go, then crosses to the window, props it open to fetch in a little fresh air; the room is rank with sweat and panic, and the harder tang of blood. Sebastian settles onto the ledge beside it, pulls his legs up onto the sill, and fixes his eyes blankly on the street below. The location of the shot suggests it was meant to hinder, not kill, and he knows Renaud would not afford Jim this mercy on purpose. He thinks of the gun in Renaud’s hand, the consequences of what half a heartbeat to the left might have meant; he lets the waves of fear and relief punch through him, vicious and heady, cruel and utterly unforgiving. The city slowly comes to life around them, and Sebastian forces open his eyes, lets his mind clear and fill with the pomegranate sky.

 

 

 

It’s close to noon by the time Jim wakes; nearly long enough to chase the shake from Sebastian’s hands. Sebastian turns from the window to find Jim watching him, his expression blank, before his attention switches to his cannula, the binding around his arm. “Fujita,” Sebastian explains. Jim accepts this wordlessly. From his seat on the ledge, Sebastian can see the tiniest speck of blood in the midst of his bandages; he forces himself to his feet, fetches the bag of supplies Fujita has left behind downstairs, sits on the bed beside Jim, and begins to strip back the cloth until he reaches skin. Jim’s eyes settle on him as he does, a hot and heavy weight, but he doesn’t speak.

Sebastian brushes his fingers lightly over the wound when he reaches it; Fujita’s work is tidy, to his relief. It’ll heal cleanly. The wound itself looks impossibly small. “It’s neat,” he says, almost absently; Jim throws him a sharp look, a breath away from rolling his eyes, and Sebastian swallows back a smile, begins to re-bandage in silence.

“You were shot,” Jim says after a while. “In Afghanistan.”

Sebastian glances up at him; he can only assume Jim has read his file. It seems strange that, in spite of everything, Jim has never actually seen the scar. “Grazed, in comparison,” he concedes, voice purposely light. “But messier. Shrapnel, not a bullet.”

He pulls the final layer taut, cuts it off, ties it tight, clumps the dirty bandages together and goes into the bathroom to tip away the ugly, red-brown water. Jim’s taken back up window-watching when he re-enters the room, and Sebastian trails his hand over his shoulder, across the bandage’s white expanse; his fingers stray ever-so-slightly over its edge, towards Jim’s neck, to the ugly, purpling bruise left not by the bullet wound but by his teeth, what feels like millennia ago. The tremble has wormed its way back into Sebastian’s hands; unmoved by combat, inexorably steady when curled around a gun, now shaking sharply where they press hard against Jim’s darkened skin. _He said your name_.

He sucks in a tight breath, steels himself to pull his hand away. He knows Jim will never mention this again – but here, in their shared, brief moment of panic, he also knows the same thought has occurred to both of them. His leg is caught tightly in the fingers of Jim’s unbound hand.


	6. Chapter 6

Jim heals slowly, fussily. He’s unaccustomed to inactivity, and also unaccustomed to being injured; Sebastian learns that once, as a child, he fell from a tree on his family’s estate and snapped his collarbone, but otherwise has never allowed himself to be wounded before, and he’s unused to having to cope as it heals.

A week sees him out of danger; three sees him out of bed, sat in his usual place at the dining room table. His customary expression of boredom accompanies more ramshackle clothes than he’d like to wear, but he’s restricted out of his usual suits by the bandage still trapping his arm to his chest. Sebastian still remembers the first time he saw Jim in an incongruous, lumpy, too-large hoodie he’d stolen from Sebastian’s wardrobe; how he’d had to quickly gnaw on the inside of his cheek to snatch back a laugh.

 

 

 

A month of Jim’s seclusion passes before Feng appears directly at the house again, heavily laden with a barrowful of coffee of Moriarty’s choice brand. “How’s the patient?” she asks on the doorstep; Jim is, for once, upstairs and out of earshot, and Sebastian grants her a very flat look as he welcomes her inside. She grins wickedly in reply. 

He liberates her gratefully of the coffee, offering a cup in return, and they settle at either side of the ubiquitous dining-room table, mugs in hand. “I have something for you,” she says as they sit, producing a folded photograph from her coat pocket and placing it on the table before him. “DS Greg Lestrade.” He flips it over, recognises him instantly; the grey-haired policeman. “Do you know him?”

He considers the picture slowly, shakes his head. “No.”

“He has a family,” Feng says quietly, her voice steady, eyes sharp. “A wife.”

“Loyal?”

Feng smiles slyly. “Not for long,” she says, and Sebastian nods. That’ll do. “Is there anything you need me to handle?”

Sebastian scours his face with his hand, tries to knead some of the tiredness from the back of his eyes; the sound of Jim awake and restless in the room next door has been keeping him from sleep for weeks. “Yeah,” he says, and the word itself feels like lead, takes a year’s worth of energy to push off his tongue. “Hang on. I’ll give you a list.”

Sebastian himself has rarely left the house these past few weeks, delegating the majority of their usual work to Feng wherever he can. She and Sebastian have spent much of their recent time reassuring the criminal underworld that Jim is not dead; rumours spread like wildfire in their seedy circles, and the most prevalent is insisting he went down in a firefight in Battersea and hasn’t been seen since. Sebastian collects a few debts with more cruelty than usual to reassure them that Jim Moriarty is most definitely still operational.

Renaud himself is already long since dead. This does not stop Sebastian from hunting down what remains of his henchmen, strapping them to beds, tables, chairs, peeling the skin from their flesh and shattering their bones one by one. He has each and every one of them begging him for death; and only then does he grant them mercy, shooting them neatly in the back of the head.

 

 

 

It’s just shy of March when Jim once again steps out of their front door. There’s less of a chill in the London air as the city turns slowly towards spring, but Jim still takes the greatcoat Sebastian offers him with thankfully little fuss, and doesn’t comment when Sebastian refuses to leave his side. They’re en route to a soirée in the suburbs; some business of Jim’s in the city has gone a little awry, and Jim’s been itching to leave the confines of their home for weeks. His arm still rests against his chest in a neat black sling, though Jim had complained no end about how this ruins the line of his suit.

Their host has a tasteless, sprawling mansion in Richmond, and the car winds its way out towards the southeast at a lackadaisical pace, trapped in the later streams of commuter traffic. His name is Simon Roxburgh, and he’s responsible for a theoretically minimal percent of a hedge fund which grants him a salary in the upper millions. Jim had been gently exploiting him to further solidify his financial ties with Beijing; until, in Jim’s recent absence, Roxburgh had somewhat taken the initiative with his books. Jim has decided to visit him personally, as a reminder of where his true loyalties lie – namely with the five photographs Jim has of Roxburgh in the company of a Russian rentboy, and the lovechild Sebastian is rather certain his wife does not know about.

The occasion is Roxburgh’s forty-fifth birthday, and although they are not on the guest list, Jim Moriarty has ways of securing an invitation nonetheless. Sebastian watches in quiet pleasure when Roxburgh first notices their presence as they’re mid-conversation with his wife, Jim having introduced himself as a friend from the city with an awkward smile and a lisping, clumsy, posh accent which doesn’t quite match with his tastelessly well-fitting suit; she’s fussing over his arm, explained away as a bicycle accident the week before, when Roxburgh arrives, fervently recommending her personal physiotherapist and one hand resting lightly on Jim’s other forearm.

“Simon,” Jim says warmly in his sequestered voice, rich and heavy, shaking his hand with a wide smile, and Roxburgh does at least have the good sense to play along. “Leticia was just being kind enough to give me the name of your sawbones. _Most_ sweet of her.”

“I didn’t think you’d come,” Roxburgh replies; unused to playing at such close-quarters, he’s struggling not to shoot a panicked look at his wife. “Business or pleasure?”

Jim emits an exaggerated sigh. “A touch of both, regrettably. When you’ve got a minute...?”

“Absolutely, yes,” Roxburgh flusters, his panic seeping through, and gestures past them at the staircase. “If you’d – ?”

“Lead the way,” Jim says, and slides Sebastian a look, impenetrable to their companions but licked with the beginnings of a feral smile.

It’s Sebastian’s job to loiter with the wife in case her further participation be needed, but he’s gripped by an unspecific itch as he watches Jim walk away, winding through the press of sweating, over-perfumed bodies. He supposes it’s the first time Jim’s been out of his sight for months; it’s natural to be nervous. “I’m afraid you’ll have to explain to me again who precisely you are,” Leticia says, sporting a shy smile and playing with her hair; interesting. He should mention it to Jim. “I meet an awful lot of my husband’s people.”

“Nicholas Parker,” Sebastian says smoothly, and kisses her hand, an oily move he’d happily disembowel another man for but one which might come in handy later; she actually titters, a high-pitched, girly noise with a flick of her hair that Sebastian has never seen any woman perform before outside of a television screen.

Although he bores of flirting with her instantly, Jim requires him to keep her occupied just for a short while; but when the designated quarter of an hour comes and goes, turns first into twenty minutes and then twenty-five, Sebastian begins to wonder whether his jumpiness might have been ascribable to more than just the break in their recent routine. He employs an authoritative gait and a hard set in his jaw to smoothly bypass the staff put in place to cut off the upper floors; nine-tenths of his profession is merely projecting the impression of absolute authority, and the remaining ten percent largely revolves around his sharp eye with a gun. The upper landing is in absolute silence, save for the reverberating sounds of the party below, and Sebastian pauses on the lip of the stairs, catlike, head tilted, listening hard. There, on the edge of his hearing – the slightest scuffle of feet, shift of breath. Third door on the right. He moves noiselessly to stand outside it, spends a moment in silent observation, and when he concludes there’s a definite lack of conversation he slams down the handle, bolts inside.

Jim looks at him quite calmly as he enters the room; he’s half-sat against the desk, his shirt torn from his shoulder and smeared with blood, Roxburgh lying glassy-eyed and motionless at his feet. Sebastian crosses the room in half a heartbeat, long enough for Jim to roll his eyes and say, “it isn’t mine.”

Sebastian rips through the shirt regardless, rests his fingers on Jim’s bandage, a crisp expanse of white. He hears the dry click of Jim’s throat, realises they’re standing only inches apart when Jim turns his head, catches Sebastian’s jaw with the edge of his mouth; he smells rank, a mixture of sweat and blood, and it makes Sebastian’s pulse come quicker in his chest. Jim snakes his thighs around Sebastian’s legs, digs his heels into Sebastian’s calves, and breaks into his customary feral smile, open and pliant against Roxburgh’s desk. _Go on_ , he’s saying, fingers skittering at the edge of Sebastian’s hips, Roxburgh’s corpse cooling by their feet, and Sebastian’s mouth runs dry.

A sharp slice of fright, evoked by voices outside the door; Sebastian, on instinct, goes utterly still, holds his breathing in check. He knows he was too damn slow-headed to lock it after him as he came through, and he’s mostly concerned about how best to dispose of the intruder fast enough to prevent their sound of alarm at the sight of their host’s blood congealing on the Persian carpet. Jim, still firmly attached to his feral smile, mouths a little along Sebastian’s jawline, and the plan forming in his mind skitters away again like smoke. He can’t think.

Jim doesn’t want him to think.

He has only seen Jim kill a man himself once before, and it was obvious to him at the time that Jim was not in his right mind when he did so. Roxburgh had not been meant to die; as before, it is possible he provoked Jim, somehow. There were evidently signs of a fight.

Jim looks up at him; a slow, deliberate motion, unsettlingly alien on Jim’s face, and a low, uneasy fear settles in the base of Sebastian’s spine. He’s seen Jim play a thousand roles to a thousand men and women across London. He knows when he is acting.

The voices outside the door quieten and fade, and Sebastian steps away, pulls in a deep, steadying breath. Jim’s expression is already schooled and neutral, and Sebastian knows his immediate priority is to deal with the corpse at his feet. Roxburgh is not the sort they can neatly tuck away with an invented history of depression and a story of a botched cry for help; he is a media figure, prestigious, well-known in Westminster. It’ll have to be murder, then, Sebastian decides. Jim’s DNA will be everywhere, naturally; his hands are bare by his side. But Sebastian has contacts in the Met that can reascribe said genetic material to that of Roxburgh’s main financial rival – whomever that might be. He can learn as much from the car. It’s highly likely they’re already downstairs.

Jim’s settled back against the desk with a look of cold amusement; it occurs to him that Jim will have worked this all out long before it occured to him, and Sebastian wordlessly turns on his heel, leaves the room. They work their way calmly through the gaggle of Roxburgh’s guests, exit through the front door, the cut of Jim’s jacket aptly concealing the mess of his shirt, and climb into the waiting car unheeded. Sebastian’s eyes are already on his phone, pulling up Roxburgh’s files, deciding on a name; there’s no input from Jim, apparently captivated by the world outside.

Jim maintains the silence when they return to Kensington, leaves Sebastian sat at their kitchen table alone. The house somehow feels impossibly small, a tight thickness to the air Sebastian vaguely recognises from long ago; flashbacks to the thick fug of cigarette smoke and unspoken arguments hanging in every room. His parents, whom he hasn’t so much as spared a passing thought in months.

He isn’t entirely oblivious; he had known something was wrong. He had assumed – hoped, maybe – that the mess with Renaud might have kicked it from Jim’s system, but Roxburgh seems, if anything, to prove the contrary. There is something tearing in Jim’s mind, deep down where Sebastian cannot reach. From the moment he’d met Jim he’d recognised that something of the man was obviously warped; but although he was capable of cruelty, he was not himself cruel.

He had thought Jim was acting, before. Sat alone in the heavy silence at their kitchen table, it occurs to Sebastian with not a little fear that this may in fact have been his first clear sight of Jim in months.

 

 

 

 

A fortnight into the following month, Fujita announces he’s sufficiently pleased with Jim’s progress to lose the sling. It is removed with no little ceremony on a miserable Easter Friday afternoon, the air outside hissing and spitting with customary thin rain; Sebastian watches silently as Jim flexes his hand, elbow, shoulder, wrist, fights back a wince. The mark itself is the size of Sebastian’s thumbnail, still rimmed with large, angry bruises; but it is small and clean. Jim watches him in silence as he binds it, lets out the smallest grunt whenever he pulls the bandage a touch too tight.

In truth, the gaunt hollows under Jim’s eyes concern him far more. Although he and Jim have fallen back neatly into the old routine, there has been nothing more like Roxburgh; Jim has seemed the very image of calm and composed for nigh on a month now. This assumes, however, that Sebastian doesn’t spend his nights awake in the room next door to Jim, doesn’t hear the restless pacing of his feet, the half-aborted sounds of fear Jim makes when he does, however briefly, fall asleep.

 

 

 

The vast majority of Jim’s work is done on home soil, and when he does travel he’s barely absent for long enough to indicate a journey outside of Europe, if Sebastian’s unaware of a specific location. Occasionally, however, his attention is required further afield, and their habit since Sebastian moved into Abingdon Road is for Jim to depart and Sebastian to hold ground in his absence. In truth, this arrangement satisfies neither of them, as Sebastian is unsettled in the knowledge that Jim is in danger halfway around the world, and (for reasons surmountable to his wardrobe at least) Jim despises the tropics.

About a fortnight after Jim loses the sling, a contact of theirs in Bolivia goes to ground, and Fujita explicitly forbids Jim from making the trip. To say this displeases Jim is more than an understatement; but he does eventually concede to doctor’s orders, and it’s decided that Sebastian will go in his stead. It’s the longest conversation he’s had with Jim in months.

Sebastian has the day to get himself in order, and his first priority is to see Feng. They meet in a pub near Charing Cross, and Feng greets him with a nod and a wave, her bubblegum nails already curved around a pint. He spends an hour or so detailing the scheduled arrangements with their tetchier regulars for the week ahead; she is already more than competent with the majority of Jim’s clientele, but there are a handful who Sebastian has kept for himself, mainly out of their paranoia and his habit.

“I’ll take good care of him,” she says with a wry smile as they separate, stepping out onto the bustling street, thick with tourists and the press of the lunch crowd. She’s turned her face up towards the weak sunlight, eyes closed, and thus misses the look Sebastian slides her, panic licked with fury. He knows, of course, that she means well; but it also signifies that he’s left them vulnerable, that in his evident transparency he’s indicated more to her than he intended to let on. He wonders whether his distraction is as palpable to her as Jim’s is to him. He flicks her a quick, noncommittal nod, and peels off in the direction of Embankment. He can feel the weight of her eyes on him without turning back.

Sebastian has business in the south of the city, but he walks along the riverbank for a little first, ducks under the Hungerford Bridge and enjoys the sprawling view of Westminster in front of him. He stands for a moment, alone in the crowd, sucking in lungfuls of the city’s grey air; he knows full well that this is where he’d stood, all those months ago, with Tewksbury’s corpse at his back and the promise of freedom stretching out in front of him for the first time since Afghanistan.

He’s putting a hit on a city type who lives over in Greenwich, one Johanna Kidlington, and he catches the tube from Waterloo in the midst of the ebbing crowds returning to their office jobs, another lunch break gone. He’d intended to kill Kidlington on Wednesday, but he needs a clear mind and a sharp head before he goes, needs that clarity that the sniper’s sight always affords him; he still remembers Jim first handing him a gun, how it had felt right against his skin, comfortable but also somehow unfamiliar. How death had tasted fresh and sharp and metallic against his tongue when he’d first killed a man outside of war.

He’s already scouted the perfect position, and he gets her home with a faked call about a boiler leak to her Westminster office. Sebastian has the shot lined up long before Kidlington is unlocking the door, and he’s dropped himself into his sniper’s haze, trained his focus down to the push and pull of his breath, the focus of his eye, the weight of the gun braced against him, ready for the kick. But his mind, distracted, is back on Jim; on the dullness of his eye when they’d first had word from Brazil. Sebastian cannot help but wonder whether Jim’s empire is tearing at the seams, suffering from his sleepless nights and obvious inattention.

Kidlington squats down in front of him, falls neatly into his scope, squinting uncertainly at her boiler and flicking through contacts on her smartphone. Sebastian breathes out, a long, steady motion, focuses, shoots.

And misses.

Not entirely – his bullet strays to the left, slams into her shoulder instead, and she’s propelled forward onto the hard metal of the boiler from the force, a hot splash of red blood onto the white casing before her. She’s not the type to have been trained for shock, and she hasn’t moved by the time Sebastian levels himself for a second try; clean and true, this time, a kill shot to the back of the head. But his hands won’t stop shaking around the weight of the gun, something akin to fear scraping through his system, leaving him feeling heady and shaken and wrong.

He packs and leaves as methodically as he can make himself move, keeps his motions swift, flags down a cab a few streets back from Kidlington’s road. Sebastian spends the journey to Kensington with his head in his hands, the crux of his palms jammed so hard into his eyes they burst and skitter with stars. He had meant for that job – that final job – to calm him, to clear his mind, to focus him back on the task at hand – but now he cannot breathe cleanly, cannot still his skittering hands. He can’t even recall the last time he’d failed a shot.

He can tell from the moment he crosses the threshold that Jim knows. Fear-licked fury elevates his temper at an alarming rate from the moment he sees him, stoic and stern at the kitchen table, eyes rank with disapproval. He can hear the snide remarks forming in Jim’s mind before he has the chance to voice them – some sneered comment about having progressed through the ranks on daddy’s merit – no sense of what it had meant to claw his way to officer class so young, without his father’s favour, only to have it ripped back from him again. And now, after having made it his life’s work to perfect the steadiness of his hand, the sharpness of this gaze, to have been left bereft of that too –

Jim’s sliding out from behind the table before Sebastian even reaches him, his tone exactly as he had imagined; with a snide voice and a sneering mouth, he manages to say, “I know in Afghanistan you preferred a drawn-out death,” and Sebastian punches him, a quick, snapped movement of his fist that sends Jim careering back against the wall, shocked eyes wide but grin still sharp. Sebastian cages him in, slams a hand either side of his head into the soft, cracking plaster, and Jim spits at him, a messy mix of spittle and blood that smacks into the white of his shirt, already caked with his sweat and mess from the rooftop. He wants to rend Jim limb from limb, tear through the layers of thick pretension, find the very centre of him and shred that into pieces, too, the mirror image of his own revenge –

Jim isn’t fighting back. Sebastian hasn’t pinned his arms; they lie slack beside him, resting against his thighs, fingers loose and free. His eyes are bright and goading; blood has collected in the feral corners of his smile. It morphs into a snarl at Sebastian’s hesitation, cruel and sharp – but before he forms another pithy goad, Sebastian says his name on a half-breath, somehow both soft and hard at once, and Jim stills against the wall, slumps. _This isn’t you_ , Sebastian thinks. For the first time since Roxburgh, he feels determined that this is in fact the truth.

Jim looks away, grants Sebastian the sight of the red mark forming on Jim’s jaw, still too young to form a bruise; his teeth are clenched, and Sebastian thinks it must hurt. Sebastian frees his hand from where it rests against the plaster, runs his thumb along the line of Jim’s jaw, and is rewarded by the most minute of movements, Jim’s eyes flittering briefly shut. His head comes slowly, inevitably forward to rest on Sebastian’s shoulder, an impossibly heavy weight, and Sebastian’s fingers curl in the scruff of hair at the nape of Jim’s neck, press down hard with the urge to keep him there.

He cannot go. He must not go. As Jim’s breathing becomes steadily more ragged against his chest, Sebastian cannot escape the thought that he is the only thing keeping Jim sane.

 

 

 

Jim sleeps like the dead for the first time in Sebastian’s memory; certainly the first time since Renaud, and that, he would guess, had far more to do with the amount of morphine being pumped around underneath his skin. He’s still flat out when Sebastian’s car pulls up outside, squatting sleek and black and out of place in the quiet Sunday morning of the Kensington street; Sebastian considers waking him, if only briefly, but he can no longer recall how Jim looks without the gaunt eyes and lick of scruff at his jawline that have become uncommonly prevalent of late. There are the soft, early beginnings of a bruise in the shape of his fist forming against Jim’s skin, and Sebastian rests his fingers against it lightly, just for a moment, feels another heady rush of guilt and shame.

It’ll take at least an hour to get through London to the airport, especially on a Sunday; he’ll ring Jim before he gets on the plane, and Jim will likely prissily snipe down the phone at him for wasting his time. The thought makes him smile. He fetches his duffel bag from his room, slings it over his shoulder and grants Jim a final glance, unconscious and legs tangled in the bedspread, both a peaceful and incongruous sight.

The street outside is otherwise deserted as he closes the door behind him with a quiet snap. Sebastian drops the duffel in the boot of the car and slides into the back, sinking down onto the familiar press of sharp leather, and lets out a rough breath as the car kicks into motion, smoothly pulls away. He runs his hand down the line of his suit, checking for passport (fake) and boarding pass (genuine, if not in his true name); the city slides silently past the window, streets already humming in spite of the hour. He hasn’t even left London yet, and his flight home the following weekend already feels like years away.

They turn away from the city, trundle into the suburbs, and Sebastian rubs his eyes, switches his attention to his phone. He finds a quick request from Feng waiting for him, clarifying a point she’d neglected to chase the afternoon before; but he finds it difficult to focus on somehow, his fingers thick and clumsy, the words slow to form before his eyes - and Sebastian is suddenly gripped, slowly but tightly, by not a little fear. He knows all too well the sensation of sleeplessness, how his brain behaves in the tiredness after a long night, and this is not it.

He’s been drugged.

He stares through to the distant head of the driver, stoic and unmoving, his head lurching and a gutwrenching lethargy scraping through his nerves. He fumbles with the seatbelt, and after decades he gets it loose – finds the door beside him locked – swings his leg round, kicks weakly at the window, but even if he’d had his full strength behind it the glass is reinforced. He’s distantly aware of the pain shuddering up through his shin and kneecap, curling round the bone, but there’s a thick blackness gathering in front of his eyes, dancing in the way of his vision. He struggles against it viciously - his muscles are still trapped in painful spasms even at the end, when the final, heady punch of unconsciousness drags him under.

 

 

 

Sebastian is surprised to wake; unsurprised to find himself handcuffed to a chair in a cement-encased room, four square metres lit by a single strip of harsh halogen. Behind him lies the door; in front, a wide, black span of glass, and he stares at it unflinchingly. He wonders who stands behind it. It isn’t necessary to be governmental in order to build or acquire a concrete bunker, but Sebastian is unaware of anyone idiotic enough in the criminal classes to kidnap James Moriarty’s right-hand man.

They’ve timed this well; with the flight to Cochabamba, they have a good twenty-four hours at least before Jim will notice him missing. It is entirely obvious from the fact he’s still breathing that what they want is information.

His mouth warps into a wide smile, a perfect parody of Jim’s. They will try to drag it out of him, he knows. They will not succeed.

 

 

 

He does not know how long they try for. Sebastian had dismissed from the off keeping any sense of time; he has no idea, after all, how long had elapsed since he collapsed in the car and awoke here. He would be inclined to believe they’ll keep this swift to avoid arousing Jim’s suspicions, but in truth there are a myriad of things that could’ve gone wrong en route to Bolivia, and he doubts very much Jim will start with the car intended to drive him to the airport. Sebastian still cannot believe he was so idiotic, so blind as to step into it without question.

He does not speak throughout. This is not to say he doesn’t suffer pain; even though he’s been trained to deal with torture, has suffered wounds before, this does not diminish the severity or intensity of what they do to him. But he’s already long resigned himself to death, and even if he were so inclined, there’d be no profit in giving them anything on Jim. They must know this; they haven’t offered him any sort of half-hacked deal. They haven’t so much as asked him a question, and Sebastian supposes they were thinking to break him first, to leave him mashed and vulnerable and jangling, splitting at the seams, a ready well of good intention waiting to be ransacked.

Sebastian is fully willing to die in order to prove them wrong.

 

 

 

He is barely human by the time they stop. He’s reminded somewhat cruelly of the man he’d found strapped to their dining table, eviscerated by Jim – he’d never learnt his name, he realises, nor what precisely had inspired Jim to do that to him. He had cleared away the man’s remains relatively quickly, but he still can remember vividly what Jim had done, could, at a guess, say even in what order. They, too, have sliced the tendons at Sebastian’s wrists and ankles to immobilise him; even if he did by some miracle survive this, he’d no longer be able to hold a gun.

He is, by this point, no longer tied to the chair. He’s simply too weak to stand.

There’s a rush of cold air as the door behind him opens, and his fear is a leaden, heavy weight against his tongue. He closes his eyes, lets out a steady breath. Sebastian is not beyond a place of pain; nor is he free from fear. He is, in truth, terrified, but cannot conceive how admitting as much will save him any further agony, or spare him from death. This is not the first time he’s been faced with death and uncertain at his chances of survival, and he still has the strength and dignity left to face it calmly. It had, after all, been a daily aspect of his life back in Afghanistan, during the war. 

Sebastian thinks back to the Grosvenor, to the choice he made – but even now does not regret – over a year ago.

 _Depends how you define the term_.

Other memories rise and fall in the black space behind his eyes; the weak smell of rose petals – his mother’s perfume. Daisy, barefoot at the kitchen sink, wet-dark hair spilling loose down her back. The taste of Jim’s skin.

Jim. Sprawled unconscious and vulnerable on his tastefully-clad double bed, sweat-soaked and chasing away nightmares in the early morning light. Gaunt and tired and licked with terror, the boundaries of his mind crumbling away into emptiness. Behind him, Sebastian can hear the hushed clicks of the anonymous gunman, readying his weapon, and he sends out a brief, directionless prayer: keep him safe.

For god’s sake, don’t let this be the end of him. 

A whisper-soft shift in the air, and he knows the barrel is pointed towards the back of his head. Sebastian stares unforgivingly at the black square of glass before him – he will find you, he thinks viciously, lips curling back in the smallest of snarls. He will rip apart the world to find you, and he will tear it down around your ears before he’s done.

Sebastian closes his eyes, lets the snarl transform into a final, feral smile. The trigger clicks; the bullet leaves the gun. It is, in their defence, a comparatively painless way for his life to end. Jim Moriarty will not grant the same kindness when it comes to killing them.


	7. Epilogue

It’s barely past eight a.m., but it already has the makings of a long day. Lestrade had been woken at six with the news of a body on the banks of the Thames – from an uneasy sleep, granted, sore-necked and unfulfilling on the sofa in the living room. This he privately does not understand; he finds his wife in bed with another man, and yet _he’s_ the one turfed out of their room to sleep ineffectually in the lounge and wish to god they hadn’t been so lazy and indecisive in buying a damn sofabed.

He squints into the thin sunlight, cups his fingers to throw a little shade across his straining eyes. He’s too sleep-deprived and hungover to pay much attention to the case – but he needn’t worry much. They’ve already had word from upstairs; this is one of Holmes’. The elder, that is. He will, later that afternoon, conclude as prompted that the body ended up in the Thames as a result of a gangland killing, or whatever line Mycroft has decided is most apt today.

Maybe death by climate change, Lestrade thinks unkindly, and snorts, rubs at his tired eyes. He glances down briefly and uneasily at the poor sod spread out before him; they’ve really gone to town on this one. He nods at the fresh-faced PC who’s lurking to one side, clutching a bodybag and looking decidedly queasy. Probably unused to the sight of a half-disembowelled man before breakfast. Still, Lestrade decides, turning from the river and crunching back up its gravelled riverbanks to the waiting car, his stomach growling. Better before than after.

 

 

 

There is, Mycroft does suppose, some satisfaction to be found in a job well done. He votes against reading the undoubtedly tasteless piece in the _Sun_ , concludes with a brief skim of the solemn obituary in the _Guardian_ instead – perhaps too flattering, he decides with the smallest of frowns. The man was a war criminal, after all. Still, the interview with the parents had been a nice touch, although he cannot imagine in reality either Moran had been as heartbroken as the prose purported; unnecessarily florid, in his opinion. Fairytales require a touch of the romantic, he supposes.

He is still somewhat unsettled that he was taken aback by Sebastian Moran. After what had happened in Afghanistan, he hadn’t thought much of the man – he certainly hadn’t thought he’d exhibit any sort of loyalty to anyone aside from himself. He allows himself a brief scowl; although a rarity, in this he had, in fact, been proven wrong. He folds up the broadsheets, drops them carelessly on the lacquered table beside him, and dismisses it. He’s simply glad Sherlock hadn’t witnessed it.

 

 

 

In general, for the most part, it is definitely true that Molly Hooper loves her job; but unfortunately, however, there are some days when ten cadavers appear as mystifying and unwanted to her as presumably they usually do to the rest of the world. She’ll have to stay late to finish the extra autopsies when she’d been looking forward to a quiet night off; plus Trevor, the _twat_ , has dragged her into some nonsense with the pathology lab and the security guard on the fourth floor. She detests office politics. There’s a reason why she houses her filing space with the silent majority, rather than the larger, brighter room she’s technically eligible to a few floors up.

She jumps slightly as she comes into the mortuary, fiddling unsuccessfully with a pair of rubber gloves; there’s a man standing beside the first of her jobs for the afternoon, short, low shoulders, sharp-fitting suit. Her eyes flick automatically to the corpse beside him as she feels her face fall into the usual, awkward smile. Sebastian Moran, she remembers vaguely from the case file. She’d already had a brief look under the sheet before she’d been called upstairs for the aforementioned bollocking, and she’d dryly assumed his death had been something to do with the gunshot wound to the back of the head – although the quantity and severity of wounds to arms, abdomen, and legs would probably merit some investigation also.

“You’re not authorised to be in here,” she says steadily, sounding a hell of a lot more confident than she feels. “Unless you’re – family? Sorry, they didn’t say at the desk –  ”

“I’m not,” he interrupts, turns to her with a kindly smile. His weight drops seamlessly back onto one foot; his shoulders skew; his expression turns shy and awkward, and after a heartbeat she forgets entirely how he’d looked before. “I’m sorry, I should’ve knocked.” He grins, warm and open; “Jim,” he says, and proffers a hand. Molly shakes it, aware she’s probably quite sweaty and loose-fingered from the fists she’d had her hands balled in previously. She feels her awkwardness mounting unbearably; but Jim continues to smile regardless, and adds, “I’m from IT.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I should note that the overarching premise for this story was inspired and expanded from [this](http://40.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mblrg5h28e1rns1zlo1_500.png) headcanon on the BBC Sherlock headcanon tumblr, which I originally encountered [here](http://alichay.tumblr.com/post/35119172817/bbcsherlockheadcanon-submission). I would have noted this in my opening notes if it weren't a spoiler for how the fic ends! Otherwise, thank you ever so much for reading, and I do hope you enjoyed.


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